


Right 'Til The End

by reinne



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: (it's mild but it's there), 1970s, Alcohol, Angst, Anxiety, Bodyswap, Christmas, Dementia, Depression, Drama, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Peer Pressure, Racism, Sexual Harassment, Slow Burn, Smoking, brian is a control freak, disco deaky, early days of queen, for plot purposes, freddie and roger still live together, overreactions abound
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2019-10-28 02:39:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 59,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17779004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reinne/pseuds/reinne
Summary: Now frantic, Brian jumped out of bed. His whole body felt wrong, like he couldn’t control it properly, but he made it to the door and wrenched it open. He stumbled into the bathroom, ignoring the startled cry from Freddie, whom he shouldered out of the way of the mirror.Roger Taylor stared back at him.Or, the bodyswap story I've always wanted to write.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Right 'Til The End (Перевод)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18474451) by [Seldereus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seldereus/pseuds/Seldereus)



> This is a story that's been brewing in my mind for a while. It's set during the early Queen years, but I think a little bit of Hot Space era bickering might have bled through.
> 
> Please excuse any inaccuracies; I am not as proficient at google-fu as many of you!

Nobody could remember precisely what had started this latest argument. Knowing them, it could have been any number of things. Brian _had_ been making a few too many tweaks to Deaky’s new song. Roger had spent the night mostly disengaged from what he was supposed to be doing, too absorbed in a leggy brunette named Rachel, or Renee, or something like that. Freddie had been fairly critical, and not too careful how he said it.

All anyone knew was now Roger’s drum set was scattered across the room, sent flying by the angriest blonde in England. Freddie’s notes had been aggressively scrunched up and were now littering the studio floor. Rachel-or-Renee had fled the scene. Even Deaky had given up his spot in the corner in favour of getting right up in Brian’s face to tell him exactly what he thought of his damned rewrites, while Roger made screeching noises from the side. 

It was total chaos.

“Honestly, you lot are _impossible_!” cried Freddie, his powerful voice allowing him to be heard above all the racket going on with the others. “How are we supposed to record a bloody thing like this?!”

“Oh, like you’re so wonderful!” spat Roger, obviously not in the mood to calm down just yet. “You never listen to anything we say, you always just steamroll the rest of us like we don’t even count –“

“That’s total bollocks, darling, it really is,” snapped Freddie.

“Is it?” Brian interjected. “What did you say to my notes on the bridge? ‘Immature wailing nonsense’, I think it was.”

“Well, Freddie had a point,” said John snidely, and the whole row kicked off once again.

They didn’t get any further work done that day, choosing to spend their time in the studio bickering and sniping instead. By the time they finally called it quits and went home the air was decidedly frosty. It was unfortunate that John had driven them all in his car, and it was by now too late to take a bus. They all had no choice but to climb into the one car and set off, the mood inside frostier than London in December.

Brian’s flat was the first they reached, and the tall guitarist gave a big kick to the back of Roger’s seat as he climbed out, saying “Oops” very sarcastically.

Next was Freddie and Roger’s. Freddie got out of the car without a word and sauntered up to the building, but Roger sat there fuming for a while before evidently realising there was nothing that could be done about his living situation in the next five minutes and stepping out of the car himself, slamming the door with a great deal more force than was necessary. John hit the accelerator the second Roger was clear and sped off without looking back.

Honestly, _what_ had he gotten himself into. This band was a disaster. Nobody could talk without them ripping each other’s throats out. Sure, each and every one of them was talented, but how was John ever supposed to show his talent when Brian and Freddie Fucking Mercury took over every song he wrote and twisted it into their own? Roger was a walking liability – his anger issues were so bad that John was certain he’d end up putting his fist through a wall and breaking his hand or destroying all their equipment and then they would have to stop playing. Freddie was a great singer, but what kind of singer refused to take vocal lessons offered by the studio? John might be the least talented in that particular area, but even he knew unless Freddie learned some proper technique his voice wouldn’t last long, and then where would they be?

He was still fuming when he climbed the steps to his own drafty flat fifteen minutes later. He’d seen Brian and Roger actually come to blows more than once. He didn’t want to be on the receiving end of that.

Usually he just sat quietly in the corner until the fights blew over, but he was just so angry. The others had all been wasting his time and the time of the poor studio staff with their petty arguments, and they were never willing to compromise. It was little wonder they had not gotten along with any of their former bass players – they couldn’t even get along with each other. John couldn’t take it.

He didn’t really have any choice. He would have to leave the band.

No sooner had he thought that than he suddenly collided with a person he hadn’t seen coming down the other side of the corridor.

“Sorry,” said John automatically, glancing up to see his old neighbour, Mrs. Finch. She was an odd woman, long since retired, who spent her days pottering about the neighbourhood making strange comments on the nature of life. She certainly was an interesting woman, having lived through two world wars and being old enough to remember the turn of the century, but she made John a little uncomfortable.

“No, no, entirely my fault,” said Mrs. Finch, readjusting her shawl. “I can see you’re deep in thought!”

John’s mouth quirked – Mrs. Finch was always a little too perceptive for his comfort. “Hm, yes,” he said vaguely.

She stared at him, her old grey eyes boring into his until he had to look away. “You all have lost one another,” she said, suddenly sounding even older than her considerable years. “But don’t be concerned. Sometimes a little shift in perspective is all that is needed.”

John’s hands twisted in his trouser pockets as he tried not to show just how uncomfortable he was with what she was saying. He was a scientist at heart, and he did think she was a charlatan who spouted vague words that could be applied to many situations, but he couldn’t deny that what she said fit his circumstances a little too well. “Hm,” he said again. “Well, it’s been lovely chatting, Mrs. Finch!”

John high tailed it out of there as quickly as he could, unlocking his apartment door and slamming it shut behind him. 

He stood against it for a few moments, breathing heavily. It didn’t mean anything. Mrs. Finch had no idea what had just happened between John and the band. She was just a creepy old woman whose main hobby was making herself seem more knowledgeable than she really was. 

John tried to put her, and Queen, out of his mind. He made himself cheese on toast (he _really_ needed to improve his diet at some point) took a shower, and got into bed.

****

That night, a storm rolled over London. It was the biggest storm in more than ten years, and it had been completely unnoticed by meteorologists until it was almost on top of them. All around the city, people huddled indoors, trying to protect themselves from the sleet and freezing rain. 

Then, all of a sudden, the storm vanished, and London woke up to a sunny, if cold, winter day.

****

Brian awoke as he usually did, gently, his eyes still closed and his body still snug and warm from the blankets wrapped around him.

He hadn’t fallen asleep easily, too upset by what had happened in the studio to put the incident out of his mind. He’d stayed up later than he normally would, drinking tea and watching the telly and trying to ignore that persistent little voice in the back of his mind that whispered _that’s it. You’ve pushed them too far. They’re going to leave you._

There was a tickle in his chest as he breathed. He coughed, trying to clear it, but that only seemed to make it worse, and he coughed a couple more times before giving it up as a bad job. He must be getting sick or something.

Brian opened his eyes, and all of a sudden the tickle in his chest didn’t seem like a particularly big issue.

He wasn’t looking at the old oak bookshelf he kept next to his bed. His bedside lamp wasn’t there, and the window which should have been at the head of his bed was shining light down on his left side. But all those details weren’t what frightened him the most.

_He couldn’t see._

His hands came up, rubbing frantically at his eyes as he sat bolt upright. He rubbed so hard his vision went dark entirely for a moment. He blinked hard until it returned, but it was the same. He could see fuzzy shapes of what looked vaguely like furniture, but he couldn’t see any detail whatsoever. It was all completely blurry, like trying to watch television that was mostly static.

The tickle in his chest made a reappearance as his breath sped up, panic beginning to overtake him. Where the hell _was_ he – had he been kidnapped? Had they hit him in the head so hard his vision was affected? Brian’s mind suddenly drifted to nights he would take his car and drive far out of London and into the countryside, just to watch the stars. He couldn’t imagine never seeing them again. He couldn’t.

Brian sat there for a few minutes, just trying to get his panic under control. Strangely, it was that annoying sensation in his chest that helped more than anything. It felt so unnatural that when his breath sped up he had to pay attention, and it grounded him.

Right. Now he needed to focus on how he was going to get out of this situation.

He took stock of what he knew for certain. The window was in the wrong place – it definitely wasn’t his flat. He could probably see well enough to get by, which was a relief, and there were what looked like clothes strewn all over the floor. Brian leant over and picked up the nearest item. When he brought it close enough to his face, he could see the details.

Huh. It was one of Roger’s godawful jackets.

_Roger._

Brian took another careful look around. This was _Roger’s_ room. So that probably ruled out kidnapping.

Had Brian gotten so wasted that Roger had brought him back here to sleep it off? He didn’t feel hungover, and he definitely didn’t remember drinking last night. It also didn’t explain what the hell was wrong with his eyes.

His hand came up to run through his hair, and suddenly, Brian’s heart started hammering once more. Where he should have felt thick curls, his hair was straight and smooth. His hair was _never_ smooth. Even when he had tried his hand at straightening it (which had been a mistake he had vowed never to make again), it had never been _this_ smooth.

He tugged a lock in front of his shitty misbehaving eyes, but there was no denying it. His hair was blonde.

No way. _No way._

Now frantic, Brian jumped out of bed. His whole body felt wrong, like he couldn’t control it properly, but he made it to the door and wrenched it open. He stumbled into the bathroom, ignoring the startled cry from Freddie, whom he shouldered out of the way of the mirror. 

Roger Taylor stared back at him.

“Oh no…” Brian muttered, and Christ, even his voice felt wrong. “Oh god, oh god…”

“Um,” Freddie said, sounding a hell of a lot more unsure than Brian was used to. 

“Jesus, no,” Brian continued, bringing his (Roger’s?) hand up to touch his face. “No way…”

“Please tell me it’s not just me!” Freddie cried anxiously. 

Finally, Brian looked at him. He could only sort of make out Freddie’s face, but even he could tell the singer was looking at him with complete panic. “Freddie?” Brian asked, still a little uncomfortable with how high pitched his voice was coming out. “Not Freddie?”

“Not Freddie!” Freddie cried, and Brian could have sworn he saw a tear escape. “It’s Deaky!”

“Deaky!” Brian sagged in relief. “It’s Brian!”

“Brian,” Deaky repeated dumbly in Freddie’s voice. “What the hell are we going to do?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian and Deaky split off to go and find Freddie and Roger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! I don't know what to say. I am blown away by the reception to this fic. I didn't think anyone would be interested, but you've all been so kind! Thank you so much to everyone who left a comment or kudos, and thank you to all you lovely readers! 
> 
> I also feel a great deal of pressure to live up to expectations. I haven't written in years and I'm not terribly confident but I really hope I do a good job!

"So let me get this straight,” Brian said, opening cupboards at random trying to find the tea. “You dropped Roger and Freddie off here, then drove straight home where you talked to a witch?”

“She’s my neighbour, not a witch,” said Deaky. “And yes.”

“Are you sure nothing else happened?”

“For the thousandth time, no, Brian.” John ran his tongue over his teeth again. His mouth – well, _Freddie’s_ mouth – felt incredibly weird, but John couldn’t say that, could he? Freddie had always been so embarrassed about his teeth, hiding then with tea cups or pieces of paper and never smiling as widely as the others in photos. John could feel that he was talking oddly, and it wasn’t just the new voice. It was the way his lips and tongue formed around his teeth. He could hear himself lisping and mispronouncing words. Brian didn’t say anything about it either, likely able to figure out the reason for himself.

“Well, what could it be?” Brian asked, but John got the impression it was rhetorical. Brian would do that sometimes, musing aloud about a problem he was having that none of them knew a thing about. He was still rummaging around in the cupboards, and John finally took pity on him, getting up from the table to gently nudge him aside and grab the packet of teabags from the cupboard.

“Thanks,” said Brian, staring hard at the box as though it had done something to offend him. “Roger’s vision is complete shit; I can’t see a thing.”

John tried stepping out of Brian’s way as he made his way to the kettle, but he misjudged Freddie’s wider frame and smacked his shoulder on the corner of a kitchen cabinet. He had woken up certain he was dreaming, but he’d had more than enough bruises from bumping into things to well and truly disprove that theory. “Well, we’re not going to figure this thing out in the next five minutes,” he said rationally. “And I think it’s fair to assume that the rightful owners of these bodies are sitting in our flats having a little freak out.”

Brian paused, looking as though that thought had not yet occurred to him. “You’re right,” he said. “So who do we check on first?” 

****

Freddie hadn’t noticed anything was unusual until he stumbled out of his bedroom late in the morning, intending to brew some coffee, when he suddenly realised he was in the wrong flat. 

Things spiraled pretty quickly from there. Freddie’s hair, which usually just barely touched his shoulders, was now well past. His mouth felt _wrong_ , too small and closed in. He lifted his arms, staring at his hands.

They weren’t his hands. 

Freddie wasn’t exactly prone to panic, but his heart started suddenly pounding a mile a minute. His face felt hot and sweaty, and his hands, the alien hands that didn’t belong to him, were shaking. 

Freddie grunted, for no reason other than to hear his voice. Even just that tiny vocalization felt so, so wrong. His voice was strained and unnatural, almost like there was something stuck in his throat. Hesitatingly, he opened his mouth.

_“Fear me you lords and lady-“_

He cut himself off. His voice was gone, weak and strained and painful. Rationally, Freddie knew there were more important things going on, but he felt a keen sense of loss at the change in his voice. 

There were tears on his cheeks, he realised absently. He rubbed them away.

He heard a knock on the door (John’s door. This was Deaky’s place), but he ignored it. Whoever was on the other side, he couldn’t see them.

That person did not seem to get the message. The knocking persisted, then developed into pounding. When Freddie still did not answer, the door opened and Roger barged in.

Freddie jumped, scrubbing at his face once again in an effort to hide that he had been crying, but he knew his efforts were incredibly transparent. It didn’t stop him from trying. “Oh, hello darling,” he said. He was trying for a cheery voice, but it came out strained and weak. Then he suddenly remembered that he didn’t look like Freddie anymore, and he wasn’t ready to worry Roger with this strange waking nightmare, so he quickly added a transparent laugh. “I mean not _darling_ ,” he said hastily. “Freddie must be rubbing off on me – I mean –“

“I know it’s you, Freddie,” said Roger. “The same thing happened to us. It’s Brian, by the way.”

“Oh,” said Freddie. “I don’t know whether to be relieved or not. I thought I was going mad.” He was stumbling on the TH sounds. Deaky’s teeth were very different to what he was used to. 

“So did I,” said Brian. “I would have gotten here sooner, but I was too busy having my own freak out to remember you were alone.”

“Roger and Deaks?”

“Deaky has your body, you might have guessed,” said Brian. “He went to check on Roger. We thought it might be a bit too much us… seeing ourselves.”

Freddie suddenly imagined what it would be like to look at himself from the outside, and he suppressed a shudder. This whole situation was wrong, but at least he wasn’t being put through that just yet.

“What is this?” Freddie hissed. “What happened?” 

Brian just shrugged. It was weird to look at. For all intents and purposes, Freddie was looking at Roger, but Brian held himself more stiffly. It was like it was almost Roger, but not quite.

Freddie stood up. “Brian, this is… this is something else,” he said. “You’re the smart one; isn’t there some kind of… some parallel universe we’ve fallen into, or some weird experimental X-ray the government’s made, or even just a bad trip –“ Freddie could feel himself begin to panic again. 

“As far as John and I can tell, this just happened,” said Brian. “But that might be okay – if it just happened, maybe it’ll just un-happen again.”

“That’s very optimistic, Bri,” said Freddie. He took a deep breath, but it didn’t feel like enough air. God, what was wrong with him? He never panicked like this. His mind was racing and he couldn’t slow it down. Not knowing what else to do and not able to handle his emotions, he brought his wrist up to his mouth and bit it.

“Hey!” Brian cried, rushing over to drop down on the floor next to Freddie. “Hey – stop that. You’re okay, Freddie… just take a deep breath…” Brian wrapped his arm around Freddie’s shoulders, and Freddie curled into him. He smelled like soap and cigarettes and Roger’s aftershave – he smelled like Roger. It was Roger’s body Freddie was leaning into, and Freddie closed his eyes and concentrated on that, pretending with all his might that he was back at home with Roger and they were hugging and laughing after another night at the pub. 

It helped calm him down. When his breathing had evened out, and he was ready to accept that it was Brian next to him (he wasn’t quite yet ready to acknowledge the fact that he was Deaky yet), he sat up. “I’m okay,” he said softly.

“Good,” Brian said softly, looking at Freddie with an intense expression that looked out of place on Roger’s face. “Shall I call my flat? Find out about the others?”

Freddie imagines himself from the outside, imagines what it would be like to see it in more than just a mirror. His stomach still rolls at the thought, but he nodded. “Yeah,” he said, with what he hoped was conviction. “Yes.”

****

John stood in front of Brian’s flat block for a long time before working up the courage to go in.

The truth is, he would have preferred to go along with Brian rather than going to check on Roger alone. That had been their first idea, but Brian had brushed that off with the reasoning that if they went together, they would have to choose between Freddie and Roger, and whichever one they visited second would be left alone and terrified, trapped in a body that wasn’t their own. Working on the assumption that they had swapped in pairs and Freddie had gotten his body, John had volunteered to visit Freddie, whom he generally got along better with, but Brian had said it would be too weird to wake up in the wrong body and then have yourself walk straight through the front door. He wasn’t exactly wrong, but that wasn’t why John would have preferred to visit Freddie.

John was a little afraid of what he would encounter if he saw Roger. Roger was volatile. John had been hit by flying drumsticks more than once just because he made a suggestion Roger didn’t like, or he messed up the timing, or even just because Roger was in a pissy mood that day. Roger would start fights with men much larger than him with absolutely no concern or thought for his own safety or that of those around him, and he threw tantrums even into his twenties. How the hell was he going to react when he woke up to find he was a tall, curly haired astronomer?

Of course, John could get lucky. It could be Freddie in there after all, and then all he’d have to deal with was the awkward situation of standing in front of the man wearing his own body. It would certainly be a shock, but Freddie was calm and reasonable, and John didn’t doubt they could work past it.

John bit his lip, hesitating. He still felt certain it was Roger in there. As scary as Roger was sometimes, he was still sweet, and kind, and caring. Roger was the person who had tried hardest to make him feel included when he first joined the band. When John had a suggestion but couldn’t make himself heard over the others, Roger wouldn’t hesitate to shout until Freddie and Brian shut up and listened. They may have fought last night, but Roger was his friend, and John couldn’t leave him alone with this. It was too much.

John gathered his resolve and walked up to the door of Brian’s flat. He knocked, and when there was no answer after a reasonable time, he knocked again. 

When there was still no answer, John began to get concerned. He fished into his pocket and retrieved the spare key Brian had left at Freddie and Roger’s and unlocked the door. It was still dark inside, despite it being nearly a quarter to twelve, the curtains closed over the living room windows and the whole flat silent. 

John was now extremely concerned. Surely Roger would have heard him open the door, but the place was silent. John moved over to Brian’s bedroom, noticing the door was closed, and carefully opened it and looked inside.

It turned out he had no reason to worry – there was Brian’s body, still sprawled in bed, his feet hanging over the end of the bed. He was still fast asleep. 

John couldn’t help but smile. Brian had been looking a bit peaky and run down for the last few days, and it was common knowledge he had trouble sleeping. His body must still be exhausted, despite it having a new occupant. 

John leaned over and grasped his friend’s shoulder, gently shaking him awake. “Roger,” he said softly. “Come on, wake up.”

Roger groaned, rolling over to his side, and his eyes blinked open. He looked sleepy, and relaxed, and just a tiny bit annoyed at having been woken. He hadn’t noticed anything was amiss yet.

“Freddie?” he mumbled sleepily. “What’s going on?”

John paused, suddenly unsure what to say. He hadn’t quite put together that if Roger had been asleep, _he_ would have to tell him what had happened, or else wait until Roger realised his legs were hanging off the end of the bed and his hair was an untamable mop of curls. “Listen, Roger,” he said gently. “Please stay calm. Something’s happened.”

Roger looked suddenly much more awake. He made to sit up, but John suddenly put his hand on his shoulder, preventing him from rising. He remembered how _he_ had awoken that morning, all gentle and relaxed until he sat up and realised his whole body felt hideously, atrociously wrong. “Just take it easy,” John recommended.

“Fred, you’re scaring me,” Roger said, and then he frowned suddenly. “I –“ His hand reached up to rub his throat. John guessed he must have just realised his voice sounded completely different. “What’s wrong?” he murmured, hand still resting on his throat.

“I’m not Freddie,” John said. “I’m Deaky.”

“What d’you _mean_ –“ Roger cut himself off, clearing his throat, running his tongue over his teeth.

“It’s happened to all of us,” explained John. “Somehow… I don’t know how, please don’t ask me… we woke up in the wrong bodies.”

John now recognised the beginning of panic, the same panic he had gone through alone and the panic he had seen in Brian when he had come bursting into the bathroom. Roger’s hand left his throat and began pawing frantically at his face, then moved up to his hair. Here, he gasped, and his other hand came up to grab handfuls of Brian’s dark curls. 

“It’s okay!” John said, hoping to prevent his friend going through the same horrible experience he had when he woke alone. “It’s okay – please stay calm –“

“Calm?!” Roger cried, sitting upwards so fast that John had to jump backwards to avoid getting his nose broken. Roger stared down at his legs, now much, much too long, and then his hands. “This is a bad trip. I’m in a bad trip…”

“You’re not,” insisted Deaky. “We recorded yesterday. We had a fight. I dropped you and Freddie back at your house. You didn’t go and party.”

Roger stared at him, as though he was hoping Deaky would suddenly start laughing and say “Just kidding”. When he didn’t, Roger’s hands came up to grip at Brian’s curly hair again, and he leaned down until his forehead hit his knees. He was making a keening sound, and Deaky was suddenly reminded of the screeching sounds Freddie and Roger would make at each other before they went out for a show. Deaky didn’t know what to say, so he just put his hand on Roger’s shoulder in comfort and left it there until the drummer was ready to sit back up.

“I’m okay,” he mumbled.

Deaky raised his eyebrows. He’d seen Roger have worse meltdowns when the bus was late. This was the weirdest thing to ever happen to any of them, and Roger was handling it better than Deaky, who had spent a good twenty minutes crying alone before Brian came in and he realised it wasn’t just him. “Are you sure?” Deaky asked carefully.

“Are you okay, Deaks?” Roger asked, looking Deaky straight in the eye like he could see inside him. “You woke me up. I don’t know what I would have done without you. You probably didn’t have anyone there for you… are you okay?”

Deaky broke Roger’s gaze, suddenly feeling incredibly guilty for his earlier fear of coming in and confronting Roger, and for all the horrible things he’d been thinking the night before. It had been completely terrifying to wake up and slowly come to the realisation that he wasn’t in his own body, and he was not dreaming either. Roger hadn’t even been there, and he thought to ask, which was more than Brian had done. 

“No,” said Deaky, so quietly it was almost a whisper. 

Roger leaned over and pulled Deaky forward into a hug. It was an awkward hug, since neither of them had really gotten used to how their new bodies worked, but it made Deaky feel safe, like everything was going to be okay. He hadn’t felt this way in weeks, and he gripped Roger’s back like it was a lifeline. 

They were interrupted by the phone ringing from Brian’s living room, and broke apart. “That’s probably them,” said Deaky, his voice sounding thick. “Brian said he’d call.” 

Roger tried to stand up, but he seemed to have completely misjudged Brian’s much taller body, because he quickly overbalanced and fell down. “FUCK!” he shouted from the floor.

And just like that, everything seemed like it was going to be okay. Deaky smiled for the first time in a long while, laughing at the comical image. Roger looked like a baby giraffe that hadn’t quite figured out its legs yet.

Roger rolled over onto his back, glaring up at Deaky, and for a brief moment, John thought he’d misjudged the situation and was going to attract Roger’s bad side. But then Roger’s face split into a wide smile, and he started laughing too.

They didn’t manage to get to the phone in time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know your thoughts! Next time, they all meet up together.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys have an awkward but necessary conversation, and try to get to the bottom of what has happened to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Sorry, this took longer than expected. Most of it was done last weekend, but unfortunately have been having one of those weeks where there's a new crisis every day. Won't bore you with the details, but hopefully you enjoy the new chapter!

After Deaky returned Brian’s call, they had agreed to meet at a café they all liked about half way between Deaky and Brian’s flats. Roger and Deaky arrived first, mostly because Roger had driven. He was usually fast, but this time he had been fast enough to make Deaky cry out in alarm more than once. He wasn’t used to Brian’s long legs, and because of the length it took substantially less pressure into his foot for the accelerator to kick in than he was used to. Roger hadn’t been too concerned about the speed. Sure, it was faster than he normally drove, but using Brian’s eyes was like living in a technicolour advert. Everything around him was so clear and beautiful. He was almost avoiding blinking, trying to absorb all the detail he could. He didn’t fancy the stupid hair or the too-tall body, but he sure as hell could get used to this. He felt perfectly safe driving faster than normal when he could see for miles.

He was less confident about moving about without a vehicle. It really was difficult to control Brian’s ridiculously long limbs, and he’d already smacked his head twice now. He was far taller than he was used to, and every time he stood, he felt dizzy and sick, like he was far too high up and was going to fall over. He wasn’t at all confident how his feet were landing when he walked, and every now and then he would reach out and grab Deaky’s shoulder in a death grip. Deaky didn’t comment, just paused until Roger let go again. 

It was a bit embarrassing, but it was better than falling face down on the floor like he had at Brian’s house.

The café they had chosen had a few tables scattered throughout the floor space, and then some booths around the edge. Roger and Deaky made a beeline for one of the booths and slid into it on opposite sides. (Roger banged his knee pretty hard doing this. By the time he returned Brian’s body to him, he was going to have more bruises than a Tesco peach.)

They were waiting long enough that they had almost finished the coffees they had ordered out of politeness when Freddie and Brian arrived. Roger sat up sharply when he noticed them walk in, but Deaky slid down in the booth as though pretending he hadn’t seen them yet. Roger couldn’t blame him. It was very unsettling.

It was _him_ walking through the door, spotting them and making his way over. _His_ body – his face, his hair, his clothes (though Brian had chosen the most muted clothes Roger owned and he looked far more drab than normal). Roger had seen himself in mirrors before, of course. He’d even seen himself on film. But this was different; this was a living, breathing human being who looked exactly like him, coming over and sliding into the booth next to Deaky.

Brian-as-Roger was avoiding meeting his eyes, but he was staring at his chest, Roger’s own big blue eyes slowly moving upwards as though he was afraid of what he would see. Roger didn’t blame him for the reluctance to look.

“So,” said Freddie, when no one else spoke. “What do we do?”

Even though Freddie had not asked him directly, everyone looked at Brian. “Well,” said Brian, frowning. “I haven’t had much time to think it over, but I’m certain there’s no scientific explanation for this, beyond shared psychosis.” 

“And it’s not that,” Roger said, and Brian looked at him directly for the first time. “It’s too vivid.”

“I guess that leaves magic,” Freddie murmured. Like Brian, he was avoiding looking at his counterpart, but his eyes suddenly twinkled at the mention of magic.

“I actually think we have more important things to worry about,” said Brian, and Deaky scoffed.

“More important than the fact that I’m suddenly a singer from Zanzibar?”

“Yes, John,” said Brian, a touch of annoyance coming out in his voice. “It’s Saturday. We’re supposed to be back in the studio on Monday evening.”

“Oh,” said Roger.

“Yeah,” muttered Brian. “I don’t think I’m going to make a terribly convincing drum player.”

Roger’s mind flashed back to his audition for Smile, when he had begun by tuning the drums and Brian had asked what he was doing. He was right – the band was screwed. 

“We could claim to be sick,” suggested Deaky.

“That might work once, but none of us can afford to lose our record deal. And if we can’t figure out a way back…”

Now feeling very discouraged, the group lapsed into silence. 

The waitress used the break in conversation as an opportunity to come over and ask if they were ready to order. 

“Yes,” said John. Like Freddie, he was still mispronouncing words, though it had gotten better since he had arrived at Brian’s. “I’ll have the ham, cheese and tomato toastie, please.”

“Er, maybe you shouldn’t?” Freddie interrupted pointedly. “You’re lactose intolerant, remember?”

“Oh, right,” said John hastily, his face going red. The waitress gave him a suspicious look, but didn’t say anything. “Um, in that case, I’ll have the quiche?” Freddie shook his head. “Roast beef. I’ll have roast beef.” Freddie nodded, and Roger had to stifle a laugh. He’d been living with Freddie for a while and so was used to spotting which foods contained dairy, but Deaky would obviously need a few lessons.

“I think I’ll have the ham, cheese and tomato toastie!” said Freddie brightly, and Deaky glared at him. 

“I’ll have the beef burger,” said Roger.

“No, you’re not having meat,” said Brian.

“Excuse me?” Roger snapped, fury suddenly engulfing him. How _dare_ Brian dictate what he ate?

“I’m not letting you eat meat. There’s a cheese and spinach pasty on the menu; that’s vegetarian, you can have that.”

Roger’s fists clenched in fury. He opened his mouth and took a deep breath, fully prepared to give Brian a serve, but suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Freddie, giving him a pleading look with Deaky’s eyes. Roger closed his mouth without shouting at Brian, but he did give him his best death glare. 

Brian ignored him. “Two cheese and spinach pasties, please,” he said to the waitress, who looked nervously at Roger before writing that down on her pad and scurrying off. 

“I’m not a child, Brian,” Roger snapped, more quietly this time. “I can order my own damn food.”

Brian bit his lip, and he almost looked like he felt bad. “I know, and I’m sorry,” he said. “I wouldn’t normally tell you what to eat, but being a vegetarian is really important to me. I know you can make your own choices, but the idea of meat going into my stomach…” Brian had a look of horror on his face at the thought, and that was no good, because now Roger was starting to feel bad. He hadn’t really considered what it might be like for Brian to watch himself eating meat. “Could you please just not eat meat? Just until we sort out this… this _thing_.”

Roger shifted, caught suddenly between his pride and sympathy for his friend. “Well, you didn’t have to be such a tosser about it,” he said eventually. “But fine, yes, I promise I won’t eat meat.”

“Thank you, Rog,” said Brian sincerely. “I’m sorry I was a tosser.”

Deaky shifted in his seat. “Maybe we should talk about that,” he said. “If there’s something we want each other to do, or not do, while we’re… until this is fixed.”

The table suddenly lapsed into an awkward silence, and they all avoided looking at one another. 

“I don’t think I mind too much,” admitted Roger. “Just, maybe we should all avoid sex for a little while.”

There was a murmur of assent around the table, and John went red again. It was a little funny to see Freddie’s face look so embarrassed like this when talking about sex, because usually Freddie was the first to volunteer to air his dirty laundry, besides maybe Roger himself.

“Aside from the meat thing, it’d be great if you held off smoking, Rog,” asked Brian. He sounded nervous, probably thinking he was asking too much. He would be, ordinarily, but Brian’s body wasn’t addicted to nicotine like Roger’s was, so he could probably find something else to do with his hands fairly easily. Roger nodded in acquiescence, and Brian’s shoulders dropped in what looked like relief.

“Fred, would you mind not taking any drugs?” Deaky asked quietly, hands fisting in his trousers. 

“Of course, Deaks,” said Freddie, smiling. “There’s not too much I’m worried about, except the lactose thing. You can eat it if you want, but you’ll feel sorry if you do.”

The waitress returned with the pasties first, placing them in front of Brian and Roger and giving Roger another uncomfortable look. “I’ll be back in a minute with the rest,” she said quietly. 

Brian dug in while Roger looked sadly at his own pasty. “Come on, Rog, it’s good,” said Brian.

Nervously, Roger took a bite out of his own pasty, and to his surprise, found himself enjoying it. He didn’t normally like spinach, but this was good (not that he was going to tell Brian).

The waitress came back with the rest of the food, and Freddie let out a moan that could only be described as pornographic at the taste of his sandwich. “Cheese is _amazing_!” he cried, his mouth still full. 

Roger’s mouth quirked upwards in amusement. 

“Deaky, tell them what you told me this morning,” Brian said. “About your neighbour.”

“Hm,” Deaky said in agreement, his mouth full of roast beef. He finally swallowed, and began to explain how, in the absence of any logical or scientific explanations, he suspected his neighbour might have something to do with the absurd situation they all found themselves in. 

“Well, we have to go and see her,” said Freddie, when John had finished telling the story of how he had run into his neighbour the night before. “If there’s even a chance… We don’t have any other ideas.”

Roger suddenly imagined what would happen if they never managed to find their way back to their own bodies again. He pictured growing old like this, stuck feeling too tall and out of place and with no chance in hell of ever making it as a band. He suppressed a shudder. 

He hadn’t wanted to bring it up with the others, or even think too hard about it himself, but there was something deeply wrong with him. He had felt it in the back of his mind ever since he had woken up. The worst part was he couldn’t even put his finger on what the problem was. He just knew the world looked slightly off, like he was living a second out of sync with everything around him. 

He’d never felt like this before. It was like he had had a blood transfusion with the wrong blood type, and now he was fighting off the foreign invasion. He wondered if the others felt the same as him, and like him, were too scared to talk about it, or if he was alone. He felt like he was alone. Growing old looking like Brian was one thing, but this… He just had to get his own body back, as fast as possible. 

They finished eating as quickly as they could. Freddie paid, saying loudly that he was happy to pay for everyone in order to celebrate the best sandwich he’d ever tasted. 

They all piled into Brian’s car, which Roger had driven from his flat. 

“Drive carefully, please Rog?” Brian asked, sounding anxious.

“Do you want to drive?” Roger snapped, having had more than enough of Brian’s shitty controlling attitude for one day. Eating meat was one thing, but Brian was acting like he was an incompetent child. “How’d you get here, anyway?”

“We caught the bus,” said Brian, sounding imperious. “I can’t drive anywhere with your eyesight. I can’t believe you _do_ drive.”

“You know, if you had’ve asked instead of being a right cunt, I could have told you where my glasses are!” Roger snapped, throwing the car in gear and backing out of the parking spot as though it was the car that had done something to offend him.

Brian was quiet for a moment, which only made Roger angrier. Clearly he had just been assuming Roger was completely incapable of doing anything and had just jumped right to the conclusion that Roger had never even bothered seeing an optometrist.

“You don’t drive with glasses,” said Brian weakly.

“I don’t need to!” snapped Roger. “I can see cars and the road perfectly well. I can’t read street signs, but who needs to?”

Brian was quiet for another minute. At a red light, Roger glanced in the rear vision mirror and saw his own blue eyes gazing back at him uncomfortably. “Sorry,” Brian said suddenly with gritted teeth.

That was the second time Brian had spoken to Roger like a child, and Roger was less keen on forgiveness now. “Why are you being such a bitch?” he asked. A part of him was hoping Brian was also feeling the horrible out of place feeling too, just so Roger wasn’t alone.

“I don’t know,” Brian admitted, hands coming up to tug at his hair. “I just feel really edgy for some reason.”

Roger glared at him one more time before looking back at the road when the light turned green. “You need a cigarette,” he muttered.

Brian didn’t say anything in response, and they drove the rest of the way to Deaky’s place in silence. 

“That’s her,” Deaky said, pointing at an old woman sitting on a bench outside the block as Roger pulled the car up. She was dressed in a coat and a hat, like any typical respectable English lady, and there wasn’t anything particularly notable about her, except perhaps that she was just sitting. She wasn’t reading the paper, or knitting, or feeding birds. She was just sitting, almost like she was waiting for someone.

“ _That’s_ her?” Freddie exclaimed. “Brian, that’s the woman who –“

“I know,” said Brian.

Deaky looked over at Freddie and Brian in the back seat. “What?” he asked.

“Oh, we passed by her on the way out of the building,” said Freddie. “She gave us this smile, like she knew something we didn’t, and then – what did she say, Bri?”

“’Best of luck, boys,’” said Brian quietly.

Freddie nodded. “We just thought you knew her or something,” he said, looking at Deaky.

“I’ve spoken to her a few times, sure,” he said, “but nothing more than that.” He let out a heavy sigh. “Well, I hope we don’t look too crazy.” Then he opened the door and got out of the car. The others were quick to follow.

John led the way over to the old lady, stopping just in front of her so he looked like he was looming. Roger suddenly became a little nervous of what this looked like from the outside: four fit young men standing aggressively over a little old lady. He glanced around, but the street was fairly empty aside from them.

“You know me?” John asked shortly.

The old lady looked him up and down. Curiously, her eyes stayed fixed on John, and didn’t drift over to Freddie at all, who _actually_ looked like her neighbour. “I do know you,” she said. The lack of detail in her answer was infuriating, but judging on what Freddie had said in the car, Freddie had never met her before, and she had no business saying she knew the person who looked like Freddie Mercury.

Clearly, John felt the same way about the lack of detail. “Well?” he cried. “Aren’t you going to say anything else?”

“What would you like me to say?” she asked. “You have what you needed. You have an opportunity to get to know one another better.”

“You _did_ do this!” Brian cried. 

“Do what,” she said. She didn’t phrase it like a question. Roger had no doubt any longer that she knew _exactly_ what they were going through, and she was simply deciding to drive the conversation around in circles.

“This isn’t funny!” John shouted. “Whatever you did, you change it back _right now_!”

“Oh, I can’t do that,” said the woman, not sounding at all flustered by the increasing hostility of the men surrounding her. “No, the only way to go back is to find acceptance in your hearts.”

“What the hell does that mean?!” asked Roger, ignoring the growing number of faces that were appearing in the windows of the flats above them.

“You were destroying your group,” said the old woman. “Your fighting was unsustainable. I’ve grown quite fond of you, John, and I could not bear to see you leave your friends like you planned.” 

Freddie, Roger and Brian all suddenly looked at John, who shifted uncomfortably and went suddenly very red. 

“What’s done is done,” continued the older woman. “It’s an old kind of magic that I couldn’t change if I wanted to. You will all have to learn to see one another for who you really are, or else grow old, alone and obscure.” With that, she stood up and nodded politely. “Excuse me now boys; I’m late to dinner with my grandson.”

In silence, they all parted to allow her through, and they watched as she made her way down the road towards the bus stop around the corner. 

Roger turned back to face John, not bothering to hide the fact that he was quite upset by the proceedings. “You were planning to leave us?” he asked in a small voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly have no idea if Freddie is lactose intolerant. I made that up to cut poor John off his cheese. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! Please leave a comment. Next chapter, they return to the studio, with all the drama and shenanigans that entails.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys try to record, and Freddie begins the long process of bringing them all back together again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Argh! This took way longer than expected. I had to rewrite this about 10 times and I'm still not happy with the end result. You have all been so kind and wonderful and I have loved getting to know you, and I really wanted to have something good for you. 
> 
> But even so, I still hope you like it.

“Roger,“ John started, staring into Roger’s increasingly angry face. Abruptly, the fear he’d felt that morning came rushing back, and John’s mind went blank on things to say to excuse himself. Roger was a lot scarier now that he was taller than John, and then there was Freddie and Brian also staring at him like they were waiting for an explanation.

John opened his mouth a few times, but anything he might have said got caught in his throat. “Um,” he began, “I –“

“Was that true?” Brian asked. “You want to quit?”

“I just –“ He swallowed, looking down at the ground so as to avoid looking at the confused and disappointed faces of his friends. “I considered it,” he admitted finally. “Briefly. We couldn’t get anything done. You were all just fighting so much –“

Roger cut him off. “Well you were being an arsehole too!” 

This was impossible. Roger was clearly in one of his moods again, and nothing John said was going to satisfy him. “Roger, you know damn well my sitting in the background and making the occasional suggestion is not equivalent to your screaming and destroying studio equipment.”

His harsh words shocked Roger into silence, and he just stared at John with a hurt expression on his face.

“Look,” said John, focusing carefully on Freddie, who looked more concerned than upset. “It doesn’t matter now. We need to focus on fixing this, and that apparently means getting along –“

“Oh, screw that,” Roger cried, and John looked back at him. He looked more upset than John thought was warranted, but now the anger had come out of his voice, and he just sounded sad. John suddenly reconsidered what he had said, but he didn’t think it had been _that_ nasty. They had all said worse.

Roger shook his head one more time, Brian’s curly mane of hair bouncing comically when he did, and then stalked off towards the car without another word. Brian followed shortly after, giving John a dirty look as he left John and Freddie alone on the street.

“I’m sorry,” John said automatically, not sure what else to say.

“Don’t be sorry,” said Freddie, but even he sounded upset under the lighter tone. “I understand why you would think that way.”

Any further conversation was cut when Roger pressed the car horn and held it down, creating an absolute racket on the quiet street. 

“I should…” muttered Freddie.

John suddenly felt a hint of shame rise up in him. Of course Freddie would prefer to be with Roger. “Yeah,” he said roughly.

“He’ll be alright, darling,” Freddie said, then quickly headed over to the car so Roger would stop making so much noise.

As he watched the three of them drive away, John didn’t doubt that Roger would be alright. After all, he had two best friends to help with whatever was wrong.

Would John himself be alright? That one he was less sure about.

****

John spent the rest of the weekend alone in his flat, except for one trip to the supermarket to get food that would go with his new enforced diet. Usually he was okay by himself, but here he was, dealing with being stuck in the wrong body, and with no real plan of how to get his own back if the others were not planning on cooperating. He spent most of Sunday thinking about Freddie and Roger’s market stall. They usually held it on Sundays – were they doing that at that moment? How were they dealing with Freddie suddenly looking different? Did Brian substitute for Roger, or did Roger go along himself? 

The fact that the other three were so obviously close hadn’t bugged him this much in a while, but now he couldn’t get it out of his mind. He tried distracting himself by practicing his bass, reading, or working on the new amplifier he was trying to build as a side project, but the image of Freddie walking away from him seemed to be burned into his brain.

He desperately wanted to do anything else, but when Monday evening came around, he still went into the studio like he was supposed to. With any luck, Roger’s bad mood would be over and he might actually be able to make some progress towards getting his own body back from Freddie.

He was late, having forgotten until the last moment that his driving license was now suddenly invalid due to his recent dramatic change in physical appearance. Fortunately, he didn’t have to say anything at first to explain himself. When he walked in, Norman, their manager, was red in the face, shouting at Brian about the drum kit Roger had trashed the last time they were here. Brian’s fists were clenched at his sides, and he was giving Norman a look like he wanted nothing more than for Norman to curl up and die in front of him. Roger, who was getting off scot-free for the act of destruction by virtue of looking nothing like himself, was watching the proceedings with an amused expression. 

That changed when John walked in. Roger glanced over at the new addition, and suddenly the twinkle in his eyes vanished, and he looked desperately sad. John almost went to apologise, but the words got caught in his throat.

Norman finally glanced over at John, and John tried to remember everything Freddie had done that might warrant the treatment Brian was currently receiving. They all knew Norman hated Freddie the most, and John really wasn’t feeling up to being yelled at. 

Fortunately, Norman only glanced at him before returning to Brian. “You’re on _thin ice_ , Taylor!” he said aggressively, holding up his thumb and his forefinger as though to show just how thin the ice was. “You’re not getting to play a new drum kit until you pay us for the one you destroyed, so you boys better find something else to do in the meantime!”

He threw one last dirty look at John before storming out, leaving the four band members alone with Roy, their sound engineer. 

As unpleasant as it would have been being screamed at for something he didn’t do, Brian now looked relieved. One of their major obstacles was dealt with without any effort on their part: Brian was off the hook for playing the drums.

John could feel Freddie’s eyes boring into him, but he didn’t dare look up – not yet. As awful as he felt, John at least understood where he stood with Brian and Roger. Freddie he was less sure about.

“What do you lads plan on doing then?” asked Roy mildly, blissfully unaware of the fact that none of the band members were who they were supposed to be. He wasn’t upset by Norman’s scene. Norman made a scene quite regularly.

Nobody spoke for a few moments, all of them looking around the room at one another. Finally, Freddie took the initiative. “I guess if we can’t record the drum track, we could work on our choruses?” he suggested, looking carefully at the other three.

Brian and Roger were both nodding, looking oddly reassured by the suggestion. Then Freddie looked over at John, who suddenly realised that when Freddie had said _choruses_ , he hadn’t meant the main section of a song. No, Freddie had meant the choruses, the choirs he, Brian and Roger sang alone and then dubbed over again and again and again until it was a cast of hundreds.

Freddie was asking John to _sing_.

It wasn’t like John had never sung before. He did his fair share at shows, and had even done a little backing vocals on tracks before. But John knew where he stood next to the other three, those gods of music. John wasn’t a singer. He had no idea how to use his voice. He wasn’t stupid – he knew that in addition to getting Freddie’s form he had also been given one of the greatest voices he had ever heard. But he had no clue how to use it. Suddenly, he pictured Roger trying to stand and falling, unable to manage Brian’s body. God, was John going to end up doing the vocal equivalent of falling flat on his face? 

He realised he had been silent too long. Swallowing around the sudden knot in his throat, he nodded. 

What else could he do but agree? The others already hated him, and he couldn’t do anything else to upset them. He’d go in there and give it his best shot – with any luck, no one would even hear him over the others. 

He ignored the small voice in his head that was laughing at him. Roger and Brian were both great singers, but the idea of their voices drowning out Freddie Mercury’s was comical.

He stayed back and let the others sort out the recording booth. John needed some air. While they were getting set up, he retreated to the little kitchenette just down the hall and began making himself a cup of tea. 

He was just stirring the teabag when he heard someone else come in behind him. He turned and saw Freddie, standing there in his own body, looking at him with that same searching expression John himself knew with aching familiarity.

“Are you okay?” Freddie asked softly.

John blinked. “Of course I am,” he said, his voice coming out much too high to be natural.

Freddie frowned – he had clearly noticed. “Listen, Deaky,” he started, “I’m really sorry for running off on you. That wasn’t okay.”

John paused, confused. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I’m talking about the other day!” Freddie explained, sounding astonished that John wasn’t understanding him. “We all left you in front of your flat. I feel terrible about it, Deaky, I’m so sorry –“

“It’s fine,” said John, cutting Freddie off. “I’m the one who should be sorry for leaving you.” Not sure what else to do and needing something to do with his hands to distract from the awkwardness of the situation, John took a sip of his tea. He had to turn quickly and spit it back into the sink, though, when he suddenly realised he had accidentally made it with milk, _again_. His face burned in embarrassment.

“Deaks,” Freddie said softly, “you don’t need to be sorry for that. You’re not a slave.” He sighed heavily. “Hearing you were thinking about leaving was a blow. I would be devastated to lose you, Deaky, truly, and I hope you’ll give us another chance… but if you want to go, you can go.”

John stared at him, having no idea how to respond. Freddie had sounded genuinely remorseful, like he really would be sorry if John left. 

It was awkward, being the last one there. Brian and Roger had been playing together for years, and Freddie had been living with Roger even longer. John had seen them around the uni music scene, but he’d barely said two words to any of them before he was being asked to audition. He was painfully aware that the three friends had let go a string of bassists before John, and John had always assumed it was just a matter of time before he, too, was fired for someone who fit the established dynamic better. 

Knowing he was going to be fired had made his decision to leave so much easier. But Freddie looked so earnest, and he was the biggest perfectionist of the lot. If there was anyone John would have guessed would make the final decision to fire him, it was Freddie.

“You really want me to stay?” Deaky asked in a small voice.

“Yes, darling!” Freddie enthused. “Of course! We couldn’t get along without you.”

“But Brian and Roger –“

Freddie cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Ignore them,” he said. “They’ll come around.” John bit his lip, and Freddie made a tutting sound with his tongue. “Oh, come here, dear,” he said, and suddenly he pulled Deaky into a hug.

It was a very strange hug, as John could feel his own hair tickling him on his forehead, and even after showering at Freddie’s and using Freddie’s shampoo, John’s body still smelled like him. John quickly got over the odd feeling, though, and hugged Freddie right back. 

They hugged for a rather long time, but when they broke apart, Deaky felt like a new man. 

“You don’t have to sing if you don’t want to,” said Freddie softly. “But if you do, I know you’ll be amazing.”

Deaky chuckled. “Hard not to be, with your voice,” he acknowledged.

“No, not the voice,” Freddie said, sounding serious. “The voice helps, but if you really want people to listen, you have to have something more. You have that something, and that comes from you, Deaks, not whatever voice you say it with.” Freddie bit his lip. “I hope you continue to say things, after we get this pesky little problem fixed.”

With that, Freddie returned to the studio, leaving Deaky feeling a great deal better.

****

Freddie settled next to Roy, looking into the recording booth at John, Brian and Roger in the domain that was no longer his. Freddie hadn’t been expecting much, but John was actually surprisingly good. He was singing conservatively, which was exactly what was needed when trying to harmonise. He was a bit too loud, but apart from that, he was doing incredibly well for his first time.

Brian and Roger were actually the biggest problem. They had had far more practice, but were used to their own voices, and kept pausing to clear their throats or ask to try a line again. From where he was sitting, Freddie also got a front row seat to the tension that still existed between Deaky and the other two.

Roger had driven them straight back to their place after they left Deaky at home on Saturday. He hadn’t spoken for the whole of the drive, and then had shut himself in his room. Brian had stayed over, not wanting to be alone, but Brian had been just as upset as Roger (although less obvious about it). Freddie had spent a great deal of Saturday night listening to Brian complain about disloyalty and a lack of alternative decent bassists. Neither Brian nor Roger seemed to have realised that they needed Deaky for more than just the band now, and if they didn’t want to be stuck like this forever they had better start putting some effort in. 

“Did something happen?” Roy asked, during what was honestly a fairly bad run through of _March of the Black Queen_. 

“Hm?” asked Freddie, who had been too focused on John’s singing.

“The lads,” said Roy, waving his hand at the booth. “They’re usually more on key than this. And they all look a bit unhappy.”

Freddie decided to fall back on an old grievance. “They’re tired,” he said, which was true. “Recording at night is tough.” He leaned forward. “We can’t even really record anything anyway,” he said. “Norman won’t let us use the drums.”

Roy nodded. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but he’s making a bigger deal out of that than it actually was,” he confessed, and Freddie turned to look at him. He’d never made all that much time to talk to Roy, but he knew he was friendly with John. “They had to re-tune them and there were some scratches, but the whole kit wasn’t destroyed.”

Freddie’s eyebrows shot upwards. Norman had been bellowing about that for probably longer than it took them to repair the damage. “And he wants to charge us for a new kit,” Freddie mused. “We can’t afford a new kit – it would be one thing if Roger had actually destroyed them.”

Roy nodded. “He will start paying you well,” he said bracingly. “You boys are going to be big. Freddie is a magnificent performer.” Freddie looked down, feeling somehow as though he was eavesdropping on a private conversation. Roy, after all, was under the impression he was talking to John. “You just have to weather out the storm.”

“We won’t become big if we can’t record anything,” Freddie murmured, mostly to himself. He wasn’t just talking about the drum kit.

Roy sighed, leaning back and stopping the recording when Brian swore – he wasn’t managing the high notes nearly as well as Roger usually did. “The studio is closed after this week for Christmas anyway,” he said. “You’re coming in at night; no one’s here apart from me. If you want my advice you’ll just take a break and either get the money or get the lads’ voices right again. No one’s going to notice.”

_We’ll notice_ , thought Freddie. The idea of taking a break was vile to him, but for the first time he could remember, music wasn’t his top priority right now. He had to get the other three to a point where they could actually have a conversation – they would work out the rest from there. 

“I know,” said Roy, in response to Freddie’s silence, “good luck convincing Freddie to take a break, right?”

Freddie chuckled, wondering what else Roy said to Deaky about him when they chatted. “He is a bit of a drill sergeant,” he said self-deprecatingly.

Roy shrugged. “He’s just passionate,” he said, and Freddie glowed. “I just hope he realises what he has in you, John.”

Any guilt of listening in on a conversation that wasn’t really his vanished, and Freddie leaned forward curiously. “What do you mean?” he asked, trying not to sound too eager.

Roy gestured again at the boys in the recording booth. Roger was carefully looking at the ceiling, away from Deaky. Brian, who was by now very obviously suffering from nicotine withdrawal, was chewing on a fingernail like he was trying to rip the whole thing off. Deaky was standing awkwardly between them, looking rather unhappy. “I see those guys every day,” he said, “and I don’t just mean in Queen. Every band that comes through here has talented musicians who could go far. Most of them _don’t_ go far. They either tear themselves apart infighting, or else become financially unviable and are dropped before they have a chance to really be heard. You’re the one who’s really going to have a chance of taking them along with you to the big time, even if no one ever notices it’s you in the background pulling the strings.”

Freddie raised his eyebrows, and he looked back at John in the booth, standing there quietly and unassumingly. He had known John was friendly with Roy and the other techs, but he’d never wondered what they talked about together. By the sounds of what Roy was saying, they weren’t just talking about the weather.

“Get Freddie to take a break, yeah?” Roy said finally, rolling back the tape to go again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment! I've been loving getting to know you in the comments. If you want to chat, I currently have an Instagram, @reinne1980, on which I post nothing, but it's there! I'm working on getting a Tumblr too. 
> 
> I was picturing that recording session of Killer Queen for Brian and Roger looking unhappy here. If you haven't seen it, it's only a few seconds and is extremely funny, I highly recommend taking a look: https://youtu.be/UjaA_LW9OVM?t=33


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys get a greater insight to themselves and each other thanks to the excessive consumption of alcohol, and Deaky tells Brian some uncomfortable home truths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back faster this time! Thank you all so much for your touching and lovely support; it really has meant a great deal to me! 
> 
> Please note: The story is starting to go down a darker road. I'm not so keen on giving individual warnings at the start of every chapter, because it just ends up being a form of spoilers, but please read the tags from here on in and decide if the story is right for you.

It was inevitable, with the shitty work they were doing, that they would just give it up as a bad job and leave the studio early. Freddie had been the one to suggest going out to the pub and getting shitfaced. Ordinarily, Brian would probably have felt like just going home and curling up in bed after such a crappy day, but this time he quite liked the idea of going out with Freddie and the others. There was an undercurrent of anxiety and nervous tension running through him, and his chest still felt scratchy, courtesy of Roger’s cigarette addiction, but he honestly was feeling generally rather good. 

He did feel a little bad for John, who was sticking close by Freddie and avoiding meeting his eyes. Brian hadn’t meant to behave like that. He had been – and still was – upset about John leaving them, but he was mostly ashamed. John had been right in what he had said. They couldn’t get anything done when every songwriting session turned into a picket fight. Brian was usually so focused on being right that he didn’t pay much attention to the fact that the quietest member of the band hardly managed to make any suggestions. Frequently, John’s notes would just end up being proxied through Freddie or Roger, who were loud enough to make themselves heard.

Brian wanted to apologise, but the words couldn’t find their way to his mouth. 

Their current local favourite was just a twenty minute walk from the studio, and although it was Monday, it was still fairly crowded by the time they walked in. They found a free table with four seats and Brian sat down next to Roger, across from Deaky. 

“I’ll get the first round,” offered Deaky, but Freddie interrupted him before he could stand up to go to the bar.

“No, I’ll get it, Deaks,” he insisted, standing up and sauntering over to the bar, leaving John looking like he wanted the floor to open up and eat him.

The table was left in an awkward silence without Freddie. It was the perfect moment to apologise, but try as he might, Brian couldn’t just open his mouth and do it. He brought his hand to his mouth again and started chewing on another nail, his heart hammering in his chest.

“Here we go, then!” Freddie said brightly, shoving a tray with a pitcher of cheap beer and four glasses onto the table. Brian tugged a little too hard on the nail, and inhaled sharply when he felt a sharp sting and tasted blood. He continued sucking on the injured finger until the sting died down enough for him to wrap it in a serviette from the table.

There was another long pause as Freddie sat back down and poured himself a beer. “Is no one talking then?” He sounded bright, but Brian knew Freddie, and he knew the brightness was a little too light to be genuine.

Brian reached out for a glass and the pitcher. Usually they just poured their own, but this time, when the glass was full, Brian pushed it across to Deaky. Roger, who had been uncharacteristically silent for most of the day, finally turned away from looking at the wall to give him a long stare.

Deaky reached out to take the glass slowly, as though afraid someone would snatch it away. He took a careful sip, and then nodded in thanks at Brian. Brian, hoping to bring Roger out of his funk, then poured a glass for him, too. 

“I’d like to say something,” Freddie said, sounding unusually serious, which fit Deaky’s voice quite well. “I think everyone’s a bit upset, and I can certainly understand why. We’ve all been shoved into the wrong bodies, and though I’m sure we all love looking at one another on the outside –“ he winked teasingly at Deaky – “it’s rather another thing to be stuck as that person. It’s like… it feels like being in a prison…” Freddie’s voice faltered, and he looked down at his hands. Deaky reached out and placed his hand on Freddie’s shoulder, and Roger turned to face Freddie for the first time, looking concerned. 

“Sorry,” said Freddie, after he had regained some composure. “I didn’t mean any offence by that, Deaky.”

John shook his head, his eyes showing that he understood.

“In any case,” continued Freddie, “we need to do better. I was devastated to hear darling Deaky wanted to leave us, but I mostly feel ashamed that we allowed him to go along thinking he wasn’t a valued member of the group and that we made things so difficult. I would really like us to move past this, and stop fighting, so we can work on getting back to our own bodies. Can we do that?”

Brian was a little shocked at the length of Freddie’s speech. Freddie was usually happy to sit in the background and let someone else talk. It was partially this fact that left Brian with a sick feeling of shame deep in his gut. It wasn’t lost on him that Freddie had not asked them to apologise for their behaviour. Perhaps he thought Brian and Roger wouldn’t do it. He’d just asked them if they could move forward.

A lump in his throat, not able to meet Freddie or Roger’s eyes, Brian nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, of course we can.” Then, because he would have hated himself if he didn’t, he ground out, “Sorry, John.”

John nodded, and though Brian was no expert, he thought John may have genuinely accepted the apology. 

Freddie paused for a moment, then when nothing else was said, prompted the last occupant of the table. “Roger?” he said gently.

Roger shifted uneasily beside Brian, but he nodded in agreement.

“I’m in too,” blurted out John suddenly. “I mean, I know I was upset, but I just want to make it clear I’m completely on board with working to get our old bodies back.”

The bitter, jealous monster in the back of Brian’s mind reared its head at that, and he tried to quell the voice that told him John wasn’t really interested in being their friend – that if they weren’t stuck in this godawful, completely fucked up situation, John would be running for the hills. Any other day, he might have given voice to those thoughts, but he’d just promised Freddie he’d play nice. So Brian swallowed his bitterness and raised his glass. “Cheers, lads,” he said, keeping his tone light. “Here’s to me finally being the prettiest member of Queen.”

That brought a smile out of each of the others, even Roger, who had been sulking for the past two days. One by one, the others raised their own glasses to meet with a clinking noise. 

“To being the smartest,” said Roger, and finally there was some warmth in his voice.

“To being the most fashionable!” cried John.

“To being the best dancer!” shouted Freddie, loudly enough for a few other patrons to glance around at the odd group. “And to cheese! Because I love cheese!”

“Hear, hear!” laughed Deaky. And with that, they all guzzled their pints as quickly as they could.

****

 

Brian never would have thought it before he came out that night, but Freddie’s idea to go out and get completely shitfaced was a great idea on par with the invention of clogs. They had moved from their usual haunt into a sleazy club Freddie had recommended, Brian was on his fourth drink, and he was feeling amazing. He could hardly remember why he had been mad at Deaky in the first place, not now that he and Deaky had been out on the dance floor twice together, laughing until they cried at nothing in particular. Brian couldn’t remember feeling this good in his life. Even when he had finished making the Red Special, he hadn’t felt quite this level of exuberance. 

A few girls had walked up to them, looking hopefully through eyes so heavy with mascara it was a wonder they could open them. Despite his exuberance, it didn’t take too much to push them away to their next prospect. Brian wouldn’t ordinarily turn up his nose at an opportunity like that (and he was truly getting an astonishing number of opportunities – Roger really was beautiful) but the thought of what that would do to Roger, sitting just over there at a table next to Freddie, was so horrible Brian didn’t want to entertain it for more than a second. 

“Do you know what the best thing about being Freddie Mercury is?” Deaky shouted over the top of the music. 

“What?” Brian cried, similarly loudly.

John cupped his hands in front of his mouth and took in a deep breath, preparing to shout through the funnel he had created. “AYYYY-OH!” 

Brian’s jaw could have dropped to the floor when ten or twelve other strangers on the dance floor stopped what they were doing, looked towards them, and shouted the same notes John had just sung back at him, huge grins on their faces. In the corner of his eye, Brian also saw Freddie look over. 

Deaky looked at Brian with a self-assured grin on his face. “His voice is like magic!” he exclaimed.

Brian realised he was gaping, and quickly shut his mouth. “What happened, Deaky?” Brian asked. “Where’s this new confidence from?”

Deaky shrugged. “Alcohol!” he cried. “Alcohol and Freddie… it’s just Freddie, Bri!”

Suddenly, Deaky reached out and grabbed Brian’s hand, dragging him out the door onto the freezing cold, filthy street, where it was actually quiet enough to hear one another without shouting. 

“Go on then!” Deaky said, voice now unnecessarily loud. Brian didn’t mind though; his ears were ringing. “What’s the best thing about Roger?”

“Uh,” said Brian stupidly. The alcohol was making it hard to think. “He’s really passionate,” he said.

“No, not that!” said Deaky, laughing. “What about being him? Apart from suddenly having girls throwing themselves at you.”

“Right,” said Brian, feeling a little embarrassed. “Well, not much point to the girls since I can’t do anything there anyway.” He paused, thinking. “I dunno. I mean, his eyes don’t work. He’s ridiculously short. He’s smoked so much that I get winded running for the bus, and he’s given me withdrawal. I mean, objectively I gave him a Ferrari and he’s given me an Austin Mini.”

John nodded for him to continue, and Brian’s hand went subconsciously to his chest. 

“But I feel…” He paused, trying to find a way to put it into words. “I feel _good_? Like, I have this crazy amount of energy. I feel like I never need to sleep, but then bedtime comes and I can just drop right off.” He shook his head, trying to clear the alcoholic haze long enough to make sense of his emotions. “I’ve never had this good a time out before, Deaks. Never.”

Deaky’s grin grew impossibly wider. “Me neither,” he said softly. 

Brian smiled back at him. “I just wish he had’ve stopped smoking when I told him to so I wouldn’t be sitting here thinking that the club smells heavenly.”

Deaky frowned. “Well, why don’t you have one?” he suggested. 

Brian looked at him skeptically. “Have a cigarette?” he repeated. “Deaky, it’s disgusting, and I don’t want to die tragically young.”

“It’s not your body,” rationalised John. “I’m sure Roger won’t mind. He’d probably find it funny.”

“Well, I don’t find it funny,” insisted Brian. “I’ve been trying to make Roger quit for years, but I guess as usual I have to do it for him.”

John gave him a searching look, and then sat down on the footpath next to the wall. He patted the ground beside him, so Brian sat down as well, rather less graciously than he would have liked. 

“Why did you try and make Roger quit?” he asked.

Brian frowned at him, confused. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Why’d you try and make Roger quit smoking?” Deaky repeated.

“Well…” Brian wasn’t sure what answer Deaky was looking for. “Because it’s disgusting. Because it’s unhealthy, because it’s expensive, because he shouldn’t be doing it.”

“It might kill him,” Deaky said bluntly. 

Brian blinked. “Well, yes,” he said. He felt completely lost; he wasn’t at all sure what Deaky was on about.

“That’s not why you’re not smoking,” said Deaky, finally looking away from Brian to stare into the distance in front of him.

“What?” Brian asked blankly. “That _is_ why.” Deaky was behaving completely bafflingly – one minute he was dancing in a club and the next he was on this tangent about _nothing_.

“No,” said Deaky. “You tried to make Roger quit because you wanted to prove you know better than him. That’s the same reason you won’t let anyone else touch your songs or question your edits. It’s the same reason you’re torturing yourself with withdrawal even though it’s not going to hurt you to have a cigarette. I’m sure you do care about Roger, but if you were doing it for his health you wouldn’t have started off saying _you_ don’t want to die young from a disgusting habit.”

Brian could feel his face heating up as a pool of anger started bubbling in his gut. “That’s _not_ true,” he insisted, even though a tiny voice whispered in the back of his mind that it was.

“You could have just asked him at the café,” Deaky continued, clearly unfazed by Brian’s sudden rage. “He would’ve been okay with being a vegetarian for a little while. Instead you embarrassed him in front of strangers.”

Brian’s fists clenched. Part of him wanted to deck Deaky, but he was stopped by that horrible, shameful voice inside him. Because Deaky was right – he had told Roger off for ordering meat in the most humiliating way possible, without giving him a chance to make the right choice himself. 

Embarrassed, he looked away from Deaky, fixing his eyes on an overflowing rubbish bin a few metres away. “He still shouldn’t smoke as much as he does,” he said, hating how weak and defensive he sounded. 

“No, he shouldn’t,” agreed Deaky. “But maybe he has his own reasons for doing it, and maybe if you gave listening to him a try, he might do the same for you.”

Deaky rummaged in his pockets, then held out something small towards Brian. “Now shut up and have a smoke with me.”

Brian looked away from the bin and towards the cigarette Deaky was holding out. Trembling slightly with cold and nerves, he reached out and took it, holding it still as Deaky lit the end for him before lighting his own and bringing it up to his lips. Deaky took a long drag, then glanced back at Brian, who was letting it dangle in his fingers. “Come on then,” he said, in a falsely bright voice. “One cigarette’s going to help you more than it hurts you.”

Hesitantly, Brian brought the cigarette up to his mouth. He tried sucking on the tip, and immediately began coughing. Deaky put his hand on Brian’s shoulder and sat there quietly as Brian tried again, trying to copy what he’d seen Roger and his father do far more often than he was comfortable with.

This time, the smoke went into his lungs, and a pleasant, relaxed sensation suddenly came over him as his body finally got what it was after.

They finished off their cigarettes in silence, and Brian couldn’t honestly remember ever feeling this close to Deaky before. 

Deaky’s hand came back onto Brian’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “That was brave of you,” he said.

Brian flushed. For the first time in days, he didn’t feel sick or twitchy or anxious. He might never understand why someone would start this disgusting habit, but he had a better idea now of why Roger hadn’t quit. “Come on,” he said roughly. “Let’s get another drink. That tasted horrible.”

Deaky smiled broadly and stood up, holding out a hand to help Brian up from the ground. 

They stumbled back into the club. Brian, wanting another minute before he faced Roger smelling like a chimney, offered to get the drinks, and Deaky went back to where Freddie and Roger had settled at their table. 

“Four beers, please!” Brian said to the bartender, shouting again over the music. The bartender, an older gentleman with a sizable gut, nodded and fetched a tray for Brian. 

“Hey there, sweetheart!” 

Brian ignored the voice, just watching the bartender fill their glasses. He heard sleazy men shout drunkenly at women in bars all the time.

A hand suddenly ran down the back of his head in a heavy pet, and Brian jumped, heart suddenly hammering at the shock of it. He wheeled around, wondering if Deaky had come back, but just saw a stranger about his own age, eyes red from alcohol and staring at him like he was an adorable kitten. Brian’s mouth opened and shut a few times – _what_ had just happened? Had that man _really_ just patted him like a dog?

“Why’re you getting beer for your friends, sweetheart?” the man continued, and Brian’s stomach roiled as he suddenly realised what was happening. “Come sit with me, I’ll buy you something nice, darling!”

The bartender finally finished pouring Brian’s drinks and pushed the tray up onto the bar. He didn’t say anything about what was happening in front of him.

“I’m a _man_!” Brian choked out, not able to keep looking at him. He grabbed the tray off the bar, ignoring it when the beers sloshed and a few drops spilled out. Behind him, he could hear the other man’s friends laughing uproariously at the mistake, and the colour on his cheeks rose.

“Did that just happen, Bri?” Freddie laughed as Brian got close enough to be within earshot. With a sinking feeling, Brian realised the others had all just seen it too. “Did you just get mistaken for a _girl_?”

And suddenly, being mistaken for a girl and patted like a dog wasn’t the worst thing to happen to Brian that night, because now he could remember laughing uproariously when people treated Roger the same way Brian had just been treated. As his head tingled with the memory of the hand in his hair and his ears rang with Freddie and John’s hysterical laughter, Brian’s eyes found Roger’s. Roger wasn’t laughing; just staring at the table with a similar look of embarrassment on his face to the one Brian was sure he was sporting himself.

Suddenly, all those times Roger had been mistaken for a girl didn’t seem quite so funny anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I find Brian a lot easier to write than John and Freddie :)
> 
> I love comments! Please let me know what you think. I realise I make some controversial choices in this chapter and would be happy to talk about it if anyone would like! I also just love hearing your thoughts; they make me so happy!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freddie has been taking care of everyone, so Roger takes care of Freddie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Thank you so much for all the kudos and comments and hits. I'm still blown away that so many people are enjoying my silly little fic, and I'm really grateful for all the support! 
> 
> This chapter is sadly a bit shorter. It would have been longer, but I'm getting sick and I have a busy period coming up so won't be able to work on this quite so much. Thought I'd post what I do have so you guys wouldn't think I'd vanished.

“Oh, I’m really not sure. I mean, I do like it, but does it say ‘trust me, Mum, I told you that new job would work out’? Perhaps if I try it with the skirt I was looking at over there…”

Freddie was only half listening to the woman as she talked herself in and out of buying a burnt orange jacket. She had been deliberating for a good ten minutes now, and it was starting to annoy Freddie. He was under the distinct impression she was angling for him to suddenly announce he would let the jacket go for half price.

They had left the club at around two thirty the night before, which was rather early by their standards. Brian and Deaky would probably have been happy to continue dancing and drinking (and, by the stench of them, smoking), but Freddie had asked that they leave early. They had all piled into a taxi and headed back to Freddie and Roger’s, where Brian had slept on the sofa while Deaky laid down on the floor, on top of the spare cushions from their sofa. 

Freddie hadn’t honestly been feeling too good. Normally he thrived on the dark, smoky atmosphere, the pounding music, the writhing bodies. Last night that hadn’t been the case. He was glad he went out, and he was now just a little less worried about Deaky, but he had been feeling sick most of the night. Ordinarily, he would have chalked it up to accidentally eating dairy, but he conveniently didn’t need to worry about that sort of thing any longer. Maybe Deaky had some food sensitivity he had forgotten to mention. Maybe Freddie was just getting sick.

As the woman twisted around to better see her back in the mirror, Freddie glanced over at Roger, slouching heavily on top of an upturned box they used as a stool. Roger didn’t look any better than Freddie felt. He was beginning to look quite pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes. It wasn’t exactly a new look, and Freddie had a pretty good idea of what was causing Roger to look so unwell. Brian had suffered from insomnia on and off for a long time, and Roger, who Freddie knew usually slept like the dead, looked like he was having trouble adjusting.

Freddie understood the feeling. 

“Are you going to buy that or not?” Roger suddenly said, his voice sharp as he suddenly looked like he was paying attention.

The woman, cut off in the middle of another monologue, stared at him open-mouthed, then let out a huff. She removed the jacket, her movements jerky, and dumped it onto their table without much care. “The old owners of this stall were _much_ nicer!” she said haughtily. “If they found out what you two are like…”

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure they already know,” muttered Roger as she stormed off, back to annoy the owners of the stall at which she had been trying out trousers. 

“How did you sleep, dear?” Freddie asked, eyeing Roger nervously. 

“Complete shit,” said Roger grumpily. “Think I got maybe an hour.” He stretched suddenly, raising Brian’s long arms far over his head. If it hadn’t been so loud at the markets, Freddie was sure he would have heard vertebrae crack. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, standing up. “I shouldn’t have snapped. We needed that sale, especially since it doesn’t look like our record deal’s going to come to much.”

Freddie frowned. Roger was definitely the more financially aware of the pair of them – Freddie just tended to let him get on with things, and it worked out because they always had enough to pay the rent and still afford food and alcohol. Freddie hoped Roger wasn’t worried about money, though now he thought about it, they definitely had been selling less the past few days. Freddie and Roger were both not feeling up to their usual salesmanship. 

“We’ll work out something with the record,” Freddie said carefully, but Roger scoffed.

“What, have me play drums?” he said, gesturing to himself. “Everyone knows Brian May can hardly lift a drumstick.”

“I think you’re overestimating how much other people know about drumming,” Freddie reasoned. “And worst comes to worst, we can switch labels and tell all the staff you were the drummer all along.”

“Right, that’s just great,” said Roger sarcastically, and Freddie felt a twinge of irritation at his bad attitude. “And I’m sure you’ll have no trouble singing with _Deaky’s_ voice.” His shoulders slumped, and he seemed to shrink in on himself.

“We’ll work this out before then,” said Freddie. His gut twisted uncomfortably, and he hoped he wasn’t lying. “We will.”

Roger was silent for about a minute, staring deeply into the ground. When he finally raised his head, he looked at Freddie, his expression now much softer. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what’s come over me. You’re stuck in this just as much as I am, and I’m being a right prick about everything.”

“It’s okay,” Freddie said dismissively. Roger was exhausted on top of all the stress from being in this situation. It was no wonder he was upset.

“No, it’s not okay.” Roger took a deep breath and shook his head. “Fred, you’ve been asking us if we’re okay since day one. You tried to help me when I was upset about Deaky leaving, and then you went to help Deaky when Bri and I were acting like tossers. Has anyone asked you how you’re doing?”

“I’m okay,” Freddie said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“But you’re not,” insisted Roger. “You don’t look well. You look tense all the time.” Roger bit his lip suddenly, like he was reluctant to say the next part. “Brian told me you had a panic attack that morning.”

_That morning._ Freddie didn’t need to ask which morning; he knew precisely what morning Roger was talking about. Suddenly he felt embarrassed, ashamed that not only had Brian seen him like that, but that he had told Roger as well. 

Freddie had been best friends with Roger for a long time, but Freddie had never really let himself be vulnerable in front of him. Perhaps it was because Roger was so much younger than him, or because Roger’s dramatic personality meant Freddie was more often than not trying to comfort him or help him talk through whatever interpersonal conflict was the latest to befall him, but Freddie usually saved his tears for when he was alone, late at night, after Roger had gone to sleep. 

He wasn’t sure he was comfortable with the way Roger was looking at him right then. 

Freddie took a long time to respond. Roger’s eyes felt like they were drilling holes into him, and Freddie was suddenly acutely aware of the noise and bustle of the market. It had never bothered him before, but now he felt like he was drowning in it. There were just too many people, and the smell was oppressive with all the bodies and cigarettes and scents drifting from the food stands. “I’m fine,” Freddie insisted. 

But Roger now looked even more concerned than he had been before. Freddie knew he was losing control, and that made him feel humiliated, and even more out of control than he already felt. His heart was pounding and he could hear it echoing in his head, and his throat seemed to be closing up.

Suddenly, Roger wasn’t standing in front of him anymore, but Freddie felt hands on his shoulders. He was being pushed into the tiny changing cubicle they had fashioned for their stall, and then the door closed and the hands were pushing down on top of his shoulders until he was sinking down to the floor. 

Then the arm was wrapped around his shoulders, and he was pulled into a warm chest. Freddie felt tears streaming down his cheeks, though he didn’t remember starting to cry.

He sat there for a while, and eventually the knot in his stomach began to ease, and he was able to hear that Roger was murmuring quiet, comforting words to him. The hand still around his shoulder was rubbing gently, and now that Freddie was able to focus on it, he realised how good it felt.

That didn’t stop the humiliation that rose sharply within him, causing his cheeks to darken red. 

“Are you okay now?” Roger asked softly. When Freddie didn’t answer, too embarrassed to do so, Roger continued. “It’s okay, you know,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.”

But it _was_ a big deal; why couldn’t Roger see that? How must Roger see him now – as some lunatic who lost control at the mere idea of vulnerability? It was bad enough that Roger, who was like his little brother, had seen, but they were in the middle of a crowded marketplace. Who else had witnessed his embarrassing display? Were potential customers going to avoid shopping at the stall run by a crazy person? If Freddie was right and they had reason to be concerned about money, had he just cost them the month’s rent? 

“Hey!” Roger said sharply when Freddie’s breath began to speed up again, and the hand squeezed tight again. “I’m here, Freddie, focus on me, okay?” 

Freddie didn’t want to focus on Roger. He rarely smoked, but what he really wanted was a cigarette right then. It was too bad Roger had given them up for Brian, because he could usually be trusted to keep a pack on him at all times.

Freddie stood up so quickly he nearly took out the flimsy propped up wall of the changing cubicle. “I’m going back to the van,” he said roughly.

He got out of there as quickly as he could, pushing past market patrons and tripping on his own feet. When he finally reached the van, he wrenched open the door and threw himself inside, and in the darkness and cold quiet of the back of the van, he finally felt the tension in his shoulders ease, and he could breathe again. 

He sat there long enough for the cold to start to become a problem, but he couldn’t use the heater as Roger had the keys. Right when Freddie was about to give up and go and seek him out, the door to the van opened, and Roger appeared, carrying a large box full of their merchandise for the day and a bag slung over his shoulder with their money.

“What are you doing?” Freddie asked. “It can’t be time to leave yet.”

“It’s okay,” Roger said gently. “It’s only a couple of hours.” He placed the box down on the floor of the van and paused. “We don’t have to talk about it,” he said softly. “Not if you don’t want to. If you do want to talk, I’m happy to listen. My sister has panic attacks… so does Deaky.”

Freddie looked at him sharply. He knew Deaky had issues with nerves, but he had never seen him have a full-blown panic attack before, not the hideously embarrassing sort Freddie had just gone through. “Deaky has them?” he repeated. His voice was rough.

Roger nodded. “He didn’t want you to know,” he said quietly. “He felt embarrassed. He looks up to you, you know.”

Freddie didn’t know, but he had suspected. Deaky had come along after a string of ill-fitting bassists, and he had been quiet, reserved, and so very talented. It did not take long for Freddie to realise that John was very different to Roger, Brian and himself, and he wouldn’t cope very well with the attention that came with being in a successful band. John would often try to shrink into the background on stage, though he had loosened up since he had taken up drinking heavily before a show. Freddie allowed and even encouraged that. He would spend longer after a show preening and talking to the audience to allow John to sneak quietly off to whatever back room they were using as a dressing room at that venue. If he saw John getting too overwhelmed on one of the rare occasions a local journalist was interested in interviewing them, Freddie would interject with something outrageous as a distraction so John could regroup. Freddie looked out for John, tried his best to make sure John could participate and perform without falling victim to the extreme lifestyle enjoyed by many on their path. 

Once, he had intervened when a fan had tried to give John MDMA. John had been nineteen, and Freddie had suddenly felt extremely frightened for him. As any nineteen year old would, John had argued that he was not a baby and didn’t need Freddie making his choices for him. Freddie had swallowed the pill himself, more willing to listen to John bitch than he was to watch John get himself into serious trouble. 

It was a far cry from how Freddie had treated Roger at a similar age. In fact, Freddie had been the one to introduce Roger to the world of party drugs. But Roger was different to John. He could handle it. 

“We can go home,” Roger said gently, taking Freddie’s long silence as indication he didn’t want to talk. “Let me just go and get the tables and we’ll head off.”

“You won’t be able to carry them by yourself,” said Freddie, even though he really didn’t want to venture back into the busy market to help.

Roger shrugged. “I’m charming, I’m sure someone will offer to help.” He gave Freddie a long, searching look, and Freddie stared right back at him. He didn’t look at all well, and Freddie quietly resolved to make him take a nap as soon as they got home. “I left some cigs in the glove compartment. You look like you could use one.”

“Won’t it bother you?” Freddie asked. “I know you’re trying to avoid it.”

Roger shrugged. “I’ll be okay. Brian’s not addicted. Makes it easier.” 

Freddie really could use a smoke, so he gratefully let Roger go to fetch the tables and crawled over into the cab of the van to light up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope you enjoyed! As always I absolutely love hearing from you and chatting so please leave a comment!
> 
> Otherwise I'm on instagram although I don't post: reinne1980
> 
> And I finally made a Tumblr: https://reinne.me/


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian and Roger discuss plans for the most wonderful time of the year, and John learns more about being Freddie Mercury than he bargained for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!! So sorry, long time no see. For those who don't know I have PMDD, which means 1-2 weeks of the month I'm completely useless and not capable of doing much of anything. This month was particularly bad and I'm still kind of getting over it and back into the swing of things. I know I still owe a couple of you responses - I promise I'm getting there!
> 
> I've updated the tags, so if you have any concerns about possible triggers please have another read.

The rest of the week passed by slowly. The four of them were all still staying at Freddie and Roger’s; nobody acknowledged it, but they all knew Brian and Deaky wouldn’t want to be alone. 

They had begun to settle into some semblance of a routine. Freddie was spending his days writing songs while Roger took the van to the markets with either Brian or Deaky, who had agreed to help out while Freddie took a much-needed break. Brian would usually cook something nutritious for them, telling them it was important to their mental and physical health, and at night, they would go to the studio.

They went later than they were ordinarily supposed to, in the hopes that Roy would think they were taking his advice and having a break. The only person there aside from themselves was the cleaning lady, who left after an hour and only spoke Polish. She would be no threat to them.

They spent their time in the studio recording. John knew enough about the equipment to take over sound engineer duties, and taught the others how to use the tape machines. They went back to basics as much as possible, recording one instrument at a time and taking longer than they usually would to get through. It was one thing getting used to walking and talking in one another’s bodies, but using their new fingers to play their instruments proved to be more of a challenge than they had expected. 

All the same, they were doing what they loved. They were slowly but surely making music, and the lack of any external influence from producers was leading to some extremely interesting and new sounds. 

On Thursday night, John recorded his first vocal track. He picked a simple song, and he knew it was just his friends watching, but his voice wavered and cracked, and his palms were wet with sweat from nerves. He glanced up and looked through the glass at the others, sitting and listening to him sing, judging him. Roger was watching him with a curiously intense look in his brown eyes, leaning slightly over the control panel he had mostly taken over duty for while John was at the microphone. Brian was standing behind Roger, looking rather odd wearing Roger’s glasses that really didn’t suit him, his jaw moving up and down as he chewed a stick of gum.

And then there was Freddie. Freddie was sitting beside Roger, leaning back in his seat. The corners of his eyes were crinkling with the small smile he wore, and he was looking at John with what could only be described as pride.

John swallowed hard. Freddie was the king of this domain, and he had been reduced to watching his friends make music while he just sat and watched. He wasn’t even very good at using the equipment; he really had been relegated to the role of a spectator. And yet here he was, giving John the most encouraging smile as John sang his songs with his stolen voice. He had been making tea for the others all evening, had been offering suggestions and pointers to make the music flow better, and had even grabbed John’s hand earlier to inspect the slowly forming blisters John had complained about. He was being incredibly kind and sweet, and he hadn’t said a single thing to criticise John’s admittedly weak singing.

Looking at Freddie, the knot in John’s stomach loosened, and he suddenly felt more relaxed and confident than he could remember feeling in a while. No matter how badly he sung, no matter how much Freddie wished he was up there instead, Freddie would still consider him a friend, would still be proud of him. 

When Roger rolled the tape back again and motioned to John to start singing, John took a deep breath, and the notes that next came out of his mouth were nothing short of perfect.

****

“Come on, it will only take five minutes.”

“No! Last time you were talking for over an hour!”

“ _Please_ , Roger?”

“I’m not doing it. It’s weird.”

“Calling my dad is _weird_?”

Roger rolled his eyes, well aware Brian was only trying to make him feel guilty. Well, it wasn’t going to work. “Yes, it’s weird, Brian,” he insisted. “It’s weird for me to call _your_ dad up and tell him I love him and I miss him – I’ve met the bloke twice, maybe? He’s never even bought me a drink.”

“What if _I_ buy you a drink?” Brian pleaded. Roger bit his lip and shifted his body away from Brian, suppressing a scoff. “Come on, please! He’ll be worried. I usually call every week, and I didn’t last week.”

“Well that’s not _my_ fault!” Roger cried. “Why am I being punished for you forgetting?”

“I didn’t _forget_ , I suddenly sound like my voice hasn’t broken yet! What the hell am I supposed to tell him, that I got kicked in the balls and haven’t gotten better?”

“Oh, so now you’re insulting my voice! Really mature, Brian, _really_ mature!”

“Lads!” Freddie barked suddenly, looking up from the notepad he was writing in over on the couch. Lazy as they all were, they hadn’t packed away the sheet and blanket Brian was using at night, and Freddie was sitting on top of the bedding as though it was the most normal thing in the world. “Roger, Brian didn’t mean to insult you; he’s just a pillock who wouldn’t last fifteen minutes in polite society. Brian, stop being a pillock. Be a dear and write out a script for Roger; nobody likes being shoved in the deep end with the parents. Roger, you’re supposed to be trying to be nice. Call Brian’s father.”

“But, _Freddie_ –“

“Enough!” Freddie cried. “This is exactly the kind of behaviour that got us all into this mess, and I’ll be damned if you two drag Deaky and I down with you. Roger, you’re going to have to talk to Brian’s father a lot more if we don’t fix this situation, and to do that we need to _get along_!”

With that, Freddie turned his focus back to his notebook. In the corner of the room, sitting in an armchair, Deaky bit down on the apple he was eating, the loud crunching sound cutting through the tension in the air. He watched Brian and Roger with an unreadable expression.

“Well, I think Deaky’s poor taste in neighbours got us into this, Fred,” Brian mumbled. Freddie’s head snapped back up and he gave Brian a withering glare. “Fine!” Brian cried, holding up his hands defensively as though looking for protection against being yelled at. “Roger, if I sit with you and tell you what to say, will you please call my father?”

Roger glared at Brian, biting his lip. He had studiously avoided meeting parents throughout his life. Whether they were parents of friends or partners, it was always extremely uncomfortable. “Fine,” he bit out eventually. “What’s his name?”

Brian raised his eyebrows. “You can just call him ‘Dad’.”

“Ugh,” Roger said, as though the idea disgusted him. He stared at the phone with resentment while Brian picked it up and dialed. Freddie and Deaky were still sitting in the living room, Freddie writing lyrics and Deaky doing a crossword and eating an apple. Why did _Roger_ have to be the one to swap bodies into the most ridiculously close family in all of England? 

Brian shoved the receiver in Roger’s face rather aggressively, and Roger gave him one last withering look before taking it and putting it to his ear. It was still ringing – with any luck, Brian’s parents would be out and he wouldn’t have to talk to them at all.

Luck obviously wasn’t on his side, though, because no sooner had he completed the thought then the ringing ended, and a gravelly voice came down the line. “ _Hello_?”

Roger clenched his jaw so hard he thought his teeth would crack. “Hello, Dad?” he said, then winced when he suddenly realised he had no idea what Brian’s father sounded like on the phone, and he might have just called Brian’s parents’ friend “Dad”. That was even worse. But there was no way back, so he pressed on. “It’s Brian.”

“ _Brian_!” the man cried, sounding rather more like one of their few but enthusiastic fans than a typical English father at the prospect of talking to Brian May. “ _I haven’t heard from you. How have you been, son_?”

Roger grimaced. Brian mouthed “ _What_?” at him. Roger ignored him.

“I’ve been fine, uh, Dad,” he said. Then, desperate to get the conversation subject away from himself (and the fact that he had very much _not_ been fine), he said, “How are you?”

Brian smacked him lightly on the arm, apparently not approving of the tone of voice Roger was using. Roger made a mental note to try and tone down the sarcasm; he didn’t want Brian’s father to think anything was wrong and not let him off the line until he admitted the problem. Brian struck him as the type of person who told his father everything. Hell, Roger wouldn’t be surprised if Brian’s father knew when his son had lost his virginity. 

“ _Oh, I’m getting there_!” Mr. May said, chuckling. Roger frowned; he didn’t understand what was so funny at all. “ _My knee’s hurting a bit… you know, the cold_.”

“Right,” said Roger absently. He glanced at the clock on the kitchen bench, wondering how soon he could get off the phone without Brian getting mad. The guitarist had been getting closer and closer, trying to listen in to the other end of the conversation, and he was now almost breathing down Roger’s neck. Roger pushed him away, scowling and mouthing “ _Get off_!” If Brian wanted to hear from his father so badly, he should have called himself.

“ _Listen, Brian_ ,” said Mr. May, “ _your mother was thinking eleven_.”

Roger blinked, frowning. “What?” he asked.

“ _For Christmas_ ,” Mr. May said, in a tone that suggested he was surprised Roger hadn’t already figured that one out. “ _It’s Tuesday after next. Your mother was thinking if you can get here by eleven o’clock, that would give us time to exchange gifts before Christmas dinner_.”

Roger’s mouth opened in horror. “Uh,” he said stupidly, then put his hand over the mouthpiece so Mr. May wouldn’t hear him. “He wants me – I mean _you_ – to come to Christmas!” he hissed at Brian.

“Well, yeah,” said Brian, as though that was obvious.

“I’m not going to _Christmas_ with your parents!”

“Well, you wouldn’t exactly be my first choice to go to Christmas with my parents either!” Brian cried. 

“ _Brian_?” Mr. May asked.

Roger took his hand off the receiver. “Just a minute, I’m checking train timetables!” he said lamely, then screwed up his face in embarrassment when he remembered Brian had a car. He slammed his hand back over the mouthpiece. “Brian, you have Christmas with them every year!”

“Yes, that’s the point of Christmas!” said Brian, as though he was explaining this to an especially stupid four year old. “It comes once a year and you spend it with family.” When the look of horror didn’t disappear from Roger’s face, Brian rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m sure we’ll have sorted this out by Tuesday week,” he said. “Just tell him you’re going, will you? We’ll be back to normal by then, and you won’t have to go.”

Roger paused, still glaring at Brian as he pondered the idea. They had been getting along better the past week, Brian and Roger’s argument over the phone notwithstanding. They may very well be back to normal by then. 

But Roger had had a bad feeling for a long time now, and the longer this went on, the worse it got. The world felt just a little bit wrong – he couldn’t put his finger on it, and he didn’t even like to think about it, but it was there. He couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that Deaky was living next to a witch, and they didn’t really know the first thing about her, about any of this. Roger knew in his gut that they wouldn’t be fixed by Christmas. They wouldn’t be fixed until he could figure out this feeling of wrongness. 

“ _Bri_? You still there?”

Brian stared at him with eyes that should be his. “Please, Rog,” he asked.

Roger bit his lip. “Sure, Dad,” he said into the phone. “Eleven works.”

****

Deaky had _completely_ forgotten about Christmas. 

It seemed impossible, with all the trees and marketing, and yet somehow being magically transported into the body of your best friend seemed to make one forget about the little things like Christmas. So here he was, barely over a week out on a Saturday morning, trying to brave the crowds at Harrods. It was a nightmare. Everywhere he looked there were children crying, mothers hurrying about looking frantic, workers looking like they would enjoy nothing more than to take the stairs up to the roof and jump, and men knocking into things and shouting about it. 

He supposed he was lucky, really. Freddie’s family didn’t celebrate Christmas, so he was off the hook for an awkward family dinner with people he didn’t know. That didn’t mean he was off the hook for getting presents, though, which was why he had high-tailed it out of the flat shortly after Roger had gotten off the phone.

Brian, the bastard who just had to remind everyone of the merry season, sounded like he might be getting off the hook too. Roger’s parents were going to be out of town, and Roger had just been planning on getting drunk with Freddie. 

John picked up a set of plates he knew his mother would like. They were nice, but they were too expensive, so he reluctantly put them down again. 

He already had a specially modified tape deck he had made himself that he knew his father would love, but he really didn’t know what to get for his mother or sister. He almost regretted not bringing along Freddie or Roger, who both understood women in a way John himself never would and could have helped him pick out something perfect.

He decided to abandon the kitchenware section, which was almost entirely out of his price range. Turning reluctantly away from a beautifully ornate display of teacups, he collided with something hard.

There was a loud crash as the woman he had bumped into dropped a vase. She was older, and quite small, and had dropped her handbag in addition to the vase. She looked flustered and upset, and John immediately felt guilt creeping over him.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am!” he cried, kneeling down to pick up her bag and brush away some shattered ceramic from its fabric.

“Oi!” someone shouted suddenly. Before he could even look in the direction of the noise, John felt rough arms around his middle, dragging him upright as the bag was snatched roughly away from him. “The hell do you think you’re doing, paki?!”

John’s blood ran cold. Slowly, he turned to face the pale-faced young man who had his arm in a bruising grip, glaring down at him from icy blue eyes. 

“I just…“ John began, his voice weak from shock. He’d heard of this happening before. He had seen people insult Freddie. He had never thought he would experience it first hand. His mind was working at a frantic pace, running through the likely progression of the situation from here and replaying what had just occurred.

“You just thought you could steal an old lady’s purse, is that it?” the man cried, shaking John’s arm until he could have sworn he felt his teeth rattle.

“No, I – I was _helping_ her –“ John spluttered. There was an audience gathering. John was suddenly very aware that the glaring, hostile eyes were not focused on the young man shaking him – they were focused on him, John Deacon.

“Lying paki scum!” the man spat, then shoved John away. He stumbled, but managed to keep his feet. The young man turned now gentle eyes on the older woman, handing her bag back tenderly and placing a hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am, are you alright?”

A small, naïve part of John hoped she would stick up for him, hoped she would tell the young man it was all a misunderstanding. Instead, she focused fearful eyes on him, and accepted her bag from the stranger. “Yes,” she said softly. “I’m alright now.”

John’s heart was hammering in his throat. The crowd was still watching him with fear and judgment, as though he was about to sprout claws and devour them all. He had to get out of there. 

John turned and took the quickest, emptiest route that he could find to an exit. Once outside, he slowly crouched down beside the building, his arms coming up to wrap around himself as the cold seeped into his chest. 

It was only much later, long after he had returned to Freddie and Roger’s and the shock had started to wear off, that he realised he still did not have any Christmas presents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for sticking with me on this journey, it means so much! Would love to hear what you thought in the comments.
> 
> I'm thinking of starting a behind the scenes commentary on this fic and basically my reasoning and thought process behind some chapters. I think about this trope way too much and I'd love to discuss it more! If you'd be interested in something like that, let me know, and follow me on Tumblr, where it would appear: https://reinne.me/


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roger opens up to Freddie. Freddie pushes Deaky out of his comfort zone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much to everyone who is still along on this ride! I have dearly loved getting to know you all, and I really hope you enjoy this chapter! I think it's the longest yet.

Queen had struck up a number of good relationships with small venues around their area of London, and one of those venues was a pub called Morrissey’s. Brian had discovered the pub with Tim, before he had met even Roger. It was fairly dark and a little dilapidated, but it was friendly to local musicians and they went quite regularly, even if they were not scheduled to play. Playing and writing their own music was only part of their job; they also needed to keep up to date with what other artists were playing. 

That Saturday evening, a rather poorly named band that made halfway decent music was scheduled to play, and a witch’s curse wasn’t going to stop them from going out to have a listen to the Righteous Experience. The alcohol available was just the icing on the cake. 

Ordinarily, Roger would have been the first one out the door. He would have been ready to leave at five, even if the others weren’t planning on getting there until six-thirty. He would have been singing in the shower, singing with Freddie, knocking back a few pre-drinks drinks. But tonight, he really wasn’t in the mood. 

He was tired, tired in a way he had never truly felt before. The closest he could come up with was when he had had the worst flu in his life when he was thirteen, but even that was different, because then he could sleep. He couldn’t sleep now. He was conscious, and he was aware of everything that was going on around him, but it was like someone had snapped a filter over the world around him, and it was slow and grey and wrong. He felt sick, and it wasn’t from the vegetarian food Brian kept feeding him. It was something different, something that felt like it was coming from deeper than just his gut. He had a persistent headache just behind his eyes, a headache he recognised from nights he would be up in the library until dawn, trying to finish an essay he had started far too late. This wasn’t like that, though - he didn’t have an essay to do, and while he didn’t really have enough time to sleep between overnight recording sessions and mornings at the market, he did have _some_ time. But when he tried to collapse into bed, his eyes did not close, and he stared into the semi-dark nothingness, listening to Deaky snoring lightly in the next room.

He carried on, because he didn’t have any other choice. He bit his tongue and didn’t say what he really thought about one of his best friends in the world wanting to leave. He ignored his friends laughing at a man he didn’t know putting his hands on his body, because he couldn’t bear their faces if he told them how poorly it made him feel. He dealt with their market stall, because Freddie was his friend and was hurting and if Roger didn’t do it, they didn’t eat. 

He carried on, because he had no idea what else he could possibly do.

Roger allowed himself to be dragged out to Morrissey’s with the others that evening. As much as his body was crying out to just be left alone on his bed in the dark, he still had some semblance of rationality left, and he knew he would feel better if he did join the others to carefully critique the Righteous Experience’s music, and less carefully slag off their name. He was also hoping to drink enough that falling asleep would not prove to be the insurmountable barrier it had been since he had woken up that morning in this too-long, too- _wrong_ body. 

This thought was at the forefront of his mind when he offered to buy the first round with the cash he was still carrying from the market yesterday morning. Brian had a smile on his face that was so blindingly bright that it made Roger’s chest hurt, while John was more subdued, quietly thanking him in that polite John Deacon manner everyone loved.

Roger’s heart ached again when he remembered that John would be gone soon, abandoning them just like Tim had. He hastily looked away and hurried up to the bar. 

While he was paying for the drinks, Freddie came along and joined him. “Hey,” he said simply.

“I don’t need help, Freddie,” Roger responded. “They’ll give me a tray.”

“I know; I have been here before, remember?” 

Roger could feel Freddie’s eyes boring into him. He kept his own gaze firmly on the tap as much-needed alcohol flowed out of it and into a glass.

“You don’t look well,” Freddie said bluntly, and something must have been _really_ wrong with Roger, because just those words made him want to cry.

He swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat and clenched his jaw. “I haven’t been sleeping,” he said softly.

“I know,” said Freddie, then reached out and laid a hand on Roger’s shoulder, and oh God, Roger really wished he hadn’t done that. “Poor darling. What do you think is keeping you up?”

Freddie kept his tone light, but he pulled a stool out from under the bar and sat down. Much as part of him would have preferred to grab the beers and scurry off back to the relative safety of Brian and John, Roger did the same.

“I’m not _trying_ to stay awake,” he said softly. Freddie nodded encouragingly, but said nothing.

Roger found it hard to look away from Freddie’s penetrating stare. Freddie and Deaky both had this intensity in them, and for some reason the fact that they had swapped bodies seemed only to compound the sensation of being looked at like they could see your soul. 

“I have a bad feeling,” Roger confessed eventually.

Freddie frowned in concern, leaning forward and placing a hand on Roger’s knee, nodding for him to continue.

Roger wanted to continue, wanted to spill out his heart to a friend who would make it all better, but he had no idea how to say it. How did you talk about the world being upside down and inside out when it was perfectly fine to any rational observer? “Everything’s… wrong,” he said lamely, breaking his gaze and staring down into his lap.

“What’s wrong, darling?”

Roger swallowed hard, shifting uncomfortably. “The world,” he said softly. “It all looks different now. Sort of slow, like it can’t quite keep up…” He trailed off. 

Freddie looked more concerned than ever, his frown deepening and the hand on Roger’s knee squeezing as though Freddie wasn’t controlling it. “Have you talked to Bri about this?” Freddie asked.

Roger scoffed, turning his head to look at Brian, who was talking to Deaky, not seeming at all concerned about how long Roger and Freddie were being with the drinks. “He’d just tell me I was being silly.” 

Freddie bit his lip, then let out an audible sigh. “I might know a little of what you mean,” he confessed. “I don’t see the world as being wrong, but things are certainly different now.” He shifted on his stool, looking uncomfortably around the room, and Roger was suddenly reminded of how Freddie had had a panic attack at their market stall, and hadn’t been able to face the crowds since. 

Freddie turned back to face Roger without elaborating further. “My parents would say that the body is holy,” he said. “There’s power in your breath and blood, and it shouldn’t be altered. I never listened much to what they said, but maybe they were onto something. Now we’re in the wrong bodies, and it’s like our spirits are fighting off a virus. Maybe that’s why my heart is always racing, and why everything seems so wrong for you.”

Roger nodded slowly. He was the least religious person in the world, but he had to admit what Freddie said made some sense. Logically, he knew the rest of the world was alright, and it was him that was the problem. Maybe if Freddie understood, Roger might be okay. “I can’t stand it,” he admitted quietly. “I’m serious, Freddie, I can’t take this much longer. How can I keep going pretending nothing’s wrong when we haven’t the faintest how to fix this?”

“Well, we do know how to fix this,” said Freddie. “When we come to understand each other -“

“And you _believed_ that?” Roger cried, only realising he was a little too loud when Freddie looked around nervously at the other patrons at the pub. Roger lowered his voice. “She told us we would have to see each other for who we really are, but she’s the monster who put us in this position in the first place! Who knows what she’s really capable of?”

Roger stared at Freddie, waiting for an answer, but Freddie evidently didn’t have one to give. He just looked at Roger, the discomfort obvious in his eyes, his lips parted but no words coming out.

Roger eventually sighed and shook his head, then collected the neglected tray of beers from the bar and returned to Brian and Deaky.

****

Freddie continued to observe Roger as they downed their first and second rounds and ate the food they had ordered for dinner. He was still quieter than usual, as he had been for days now, but other than that and the paleness that came from a lack of sleep, he seemed to be better off than he had been at the bar, when Freddie had been a little afraid he would start crying in front of everyone. He plainly was not in the mood to talk any longer, and he studiously avoided Freddie’s gaze, choosing to focus on the others instead. 

That was actually alright with Freddie, because Roger hadn’t been the only one of his friends to raise his concerns. John had gone out earlier to buy Christmas presents, and hadn’t been seen until much later, with no presents and dubious claims that he had had to rush home to take care of something. He had been giving Freddie searching, suspicious looks every now and then that made Freddie feel like he might have done something wrong, except that he couldn’t think what that might be. 

Deaky seemed to be interacting normally with Brian and Roger, so Freddie didn’t want to upset the apple cart by bringing up whatever might be wrong. If it was important, he could find out later.

“What on earth is taking so long?” Brian murmured suddenly, eyes on the tiny stage set up within the dingy pub. Freddie glanced up at the clock and realised Brian was right - the Righteous Experience were very late. 

The timing of Brian’s observation couldn’t have been better, because they were suddenly interrupted by the clearing of a throat over Deaky’s shoulder, and they all turned to face Ajay, the son of the owner of Morrissey’s and the man they usually spoke to when organising to play there. “How are you lads doing tonight?” he asked lightly, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a small smile. Ajay was one of those people who was relentlessly positive, and seemed to be able to cope with anything. Freddie sometimes wished his high-strung bandmates would take a leaf out of his book.

“Good, thanks,” said Deaky, sounding surprised. “How are you?” 

“Alright,” said Ajay, beaming. “Although the crowd’s getting a little antsy. You must have noticed Mike and the gang are late.”

Mike was the lead guitarist - and lead personality - of the Righteous Experience. He and Roger had gotten into a fistfight two months ago, but he was generally more reliable than this. 

“Yeah, what happened there?” Roger asked. 

“They were driving down from Glasgow today and had car problems,” explained Ajay. “I just got the phone call. They’re not going to make it. So I was wondering…” Ajay trailed off, looking at the four of them pointedly.

Freddie bit his lip nervously, while Brian looked panicked. Deaky choked a little on the beer he had swallowed at an unfortunate moment. “Uh, we can’t,” said Roger hastily. “Roger hurt his elbow, he can’t play.”

Ajay’s eyes drifted to where Brian had his arms crossed across his chest, looking very uninjured. Brian flushed under the scrutiny and uncrossed his arms, probably not realising that moving them around made him look even more suspicious. “Um, yes, the doctor told me to take a break,” said Brian lamely.

“Right,” said Ajay slowly, his gaze narrowing suspiciously. Fortunately, he wasn’t the type to push too hard. “Well, people are getting antsy, and they’re not getting any more sober. Think you could do an acoustic set with no drums? What do you reckon, Freddie?”

John let out a sound that was almost a squeak. “With all these people?” he said.

“Uh, yes,” Ajay said, frowning in confusion. “Like you do every few weeks.” He paused. “Look, you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said. “I know you weren’t scheduled tonight; I just thought I’d ask. We have the instruments… if you change your mind.” With that, Ajay turned and headed back towards the kitchen.

“You should do it,” said Freddie suddenly as soon as Ajay was out of earshot, before anyone else could say anything.

“What?” Deaky said feebly, as though Freddie was mad. 

“You should perform! Roger can play the guitar, and you can sing! You’d be wonderful, John.”

John let out a nervous laugh, taking another sip of his drink as though he was looking for something to do with his hands. “Oh, no, Freddie,” he said. “I’m not like you; I can’t perform like that. I’m not you.”

“You don’t have to be me,” Freddie continued. In his mind, he was replaying the moment in the studio when he had finally seen Deaky get some confidence. John always came across as reserved and unsure of himself whenever he was in unfamiliar territory, but he had sung with such a touching vulnerability that Freddie had been spellbound. John may not be as exuberant a performer as Freddie, but he was magic in his own way. In fact, now that Freddie had the idea in his mind, he really thought Deaky had the potential to be a better singer for an acoustic set than Freddie himself. “I really think you would be brilliant, darling, just being you.”

John shifted in his seat. “I don’t know…” he said, and Freddie knew he was breaking through.

“I’ll get you a shot of vodka, if that would make it easier! Come on, Rog, Bri, don’t you think he would be wonderful?”

“Don’t make him if he doesn’t want to,” said Brian gently. “But yes, John, if you do want to do it I think you would be great.”

Roger’s face was carefully blank, and he was chewing on a thumbnail, but even he nodded. “You would be good, and if you ever wanted to give it a try, now’s your chance,” he said. “I’ll be right there with you. It’s up to you, though.”

John’s face was pale. His eyes were darting back and forth between two points on the table as he tried to make a decision. “Okay,” he said eventually. “I’ll do it for two shots of vodka.”

Freddie felt a wide smile come over his face at Deaky’s words. He knew it wasn’t an easy decision for Deaky, but Freddie really believed it was the right choice to make. “That’s wonderful, darling,” he said, squeezing John’s shoulder. “I guess I have to go and buy you some shots, then!”

While Freddie went up to the bar in search of alcohol, Brian went to find Ajay and help him set up the stage. This left John and Roger behind, and Freddie took this opportunity to observe them. John seemed nervous; he was tense in the shoulders and every now and then he was biting his lip. Roger, on the other hand, seemed just tired and lacklustre. Roger was saying something that Freddie couldn’t make out from this distance, probably discussing what they could play for the crowd, but even though Freddie couldn’t hear him, he could imagine the exhausted tone in his voice. 

A tiny, small part of Freddie was jealous of John. Freddie knew it was wrong, and he tried to focus on the bigger part of him that was just so proud of how John had been stepping up recently, but he couldn’t dismiss the jealousy entirely, particularly after his sobering conversation with Roger. Every one of them was talented and good in front of a crowd, but Freddie was the one who really revelled in the spotlight. But more than that, he missed his voice. He missed the way it felt when he just opened his mouth and sang and it was easy as breathing. He missed the powerful feeling he got when he had the audience in the palm of his hand, and there wasn’t even the tiniest hint of fear.

Now, things were different. He felt nervous all the time for no reason, and without his voice, he had no idea how to get out of that rut. Besides his embarrassing episode at the market, he had generally been coping, holding on to the idea that things would be back to normal very soon, but Roger had driven a sharp stake of doubt into that idea with his despair. Despite their terrible circumstances, Freddie would have been lying if he claimed he wasn’t at least a little excited at the prospect of magic in the world, and he had been thinking about finding Mrs. Finch to have a longer discussion. Now, however, he couldn’t help but feel Roger had a point about trusting her. How did they really know they were ever going to get back to what they had been before?

Freddie returned to the table with a double shot of vodka for John, who downed it and murmured a soft word of thanks. Roger leaned over closer to him and murmured, “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” said John firmly, almost as though the alcohol had already had time to work its way through his system and bolster his confidence. “It’s like you said, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to see what it’s like to sing to a crowd.” He licked his lips, clearing up any remaining drops of vodka. “Besides, if I completely fuck up, everyone will be blaming you, Freddie.”

“You won’t fuck up,” said Freddie.

Brian, who had either forgotten about or given up the pretence of having a hurt arm, beckoned them from the stage, which was now ready. John let out a sharp breath. “Well,” he said to Roger, “I guess we should do this, then?”

Freddie settled down back at their table to watch their performance, where he was joined shortly by Brian. 

“Hello, everyone,” said Roger into the microphone, and the chatter in the pub dropped off sharply. He was settled on a stool on the stage, an acoustic guitar in his lap and a microphone stand in front of him. Beside him, John was sitting on his own stool, holding a microphone and twisting the cord in his spare hand nervously. “So, unfortunately the Righteous Experience couldn’t be here tonight, so we’ll be playing a couple of songs for you. My name’s Brian May, and this is Freddie Mercury, and we’re from a band called Queen.”

Somewhere in the crowd, a girl let out a loud whoop, and Freddie couldn’t suppress a smile. They weren’t very well known yet, and it was always nice to feel like someone did appreciate their work.

Roger looked across at John before he started, as though searching for his consent. When John smiled and nodded, Roger began strumming. Freddie would never have known this was Roger’s first time playing the guitar in a brand new body - his opening notes were impeccable. Freddie supposed that a combination of Roger’s ability combined with Brian’s muscle memory made this easier for him than it had been for Deaky in the studio. 

But that was nothing compared to how John entered the song.

He sang beautifully, and it was so much more than having Freddie’s powerful voice. There was a quiet, conservative vulnerability to John’s performance that Freddie honestly didn’t believe he could have matched, but at the same time John didn’t let his voice waver. He knew exactly how much power to put through, and he didn’t fall into the trap common to new singers of trying too many flourishes. He and Roger blended seamlessly together like they usually did in the studio. It wasn’t a Queen performance, lacking the drums and bass and energy usually present in a Queen performance, but Freddie was spellbound while he watched John, as though the whole world faded into the background. 

They didn’t play for too long, only covering a few songs, but when they were finished, the whole pub erupted into applause. Freddie joined in, and could feel Brian clapping beside him. “They’re really good together,” Brian said to Freddie, leaning over and speaking louder over the volume of the applause.

“They always have been,” said Freddie. He didn’t look at Brian - his eyes were still focused on John. 

John’s eyes were roving over the crowd as they cheered, but he wasn’t smiling. His jaw was set in tension, and he looked nearly as pale as the badly sleep deprived Roger. Suddenly, John got up off his stool and laid the microphone down on top of it, not turning around when it rolled off and crashed onto the floor, creating a harsh feedback noise in the speakers. John climbed hastily off the makeshift stage and nearly barrelled through the crowd towards the doors.

Freddie leapt up, and Brian, next to him, did the same. Freddie glanced over at him briefly, but Brian just waved his hand in the direction of the door, indicating that Freddie should be the one to go. Freddie did not need any additional prompting, just hurried out the door after John.

It didn’t take long to find him. He was leaning with his back against the wall a few steps away from the door to the pub, staring into the dark with an odd look on his face. He was breathing more heavily than he should have been considering he had not really done any exercise.

Freddie came over to him, joining him in leaning against the wall. “You were wonderful,” he said softly, honestly.

John looked up at him suddenly, as though he had not realised Freddie was there. 

When John didn’t say anything, Freddie prompted him. “Was it too much?” he asked. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to push you.”

“No,” said John, looking back into the distance. “I mean, it was hard, all those people… but I focused on you, and it was okay again.”

Freddie felt an odd sensation in his chest at that, almost like his heart had done a somersault. 

“I think I did just about hit my limit, though,” John admitted, the corner of his mouth quirking slightly. “At the end… all their applause… I just had to get out.” He looked at the ground. “I know I’ve played a thousand shows before,” he said. “But this was different. I felt naked. In some ways that’s a good thing…”

“But it can get a bit much,” Freddie finished for him. “I understand. But you really were wonderful, and I’m so proud of you for giving it a try.”

For some reason, Deaky didn’t look exactly pleased by what Freddie had said - he looked uncomfortable. “Freddie,” he said suddenly, looking back up at him as though he was afraid of what he was going to say next. “Do people… I mean… are people ever mean to you?”

Freddie frowned. Of all the things he had been expecting Deaky to say, that wasn’t it. “Well, sometimes,” he said. “I’m sure people are mean to you too, sometimes.”

Deaky narrowed his eyes and bit his lip, looking like he wanted to say more but wasn’t sure how to go about it. “It’s different,” he said eventually.

“Why?” asked Freddie slowly. “Did someone say something nasty to you?” If someone had, Freddie would seek them out. It had been so hard for John to put himself out there and sing, and if someone had spoiled experience for John, Freddie would just have to go back to his old boxing training. 

But his question only seemed to make Deaky clam up. “It’s nothing,” he said hastily, raising Freddie’s concerns tenfold. “I’m just going to go back inside; I need to talk to Rog about something.” 

Deaky scurried off faster than Freddie had ever seen him move, and Freddie was left standing alone in the dark, wondering what on earth that had all been about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, please leave a comment and let me know what you thought! I had this scene with Deaky and Roger in my mind since the beginning pretty much. I really love hearing from you guys. If you have any questions or concerns I'm always open to discussing them too. 
> 
> Find me on Tumblr too: https://reinne.me/ I plan on posting some behind the scenes stuff, but I'm out most nights of the week and the time I do have is generally spent writing this, but I'll get around to it eventually.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deaky spends some quality time with Roger while Christmas shopping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Argh! This is so late and I'm so sorry. Was meant to be out days ago but I had a migraine. It's also a little bit filler-y unfortunately, sorry. I just needed to write this out before the Christmas chapters and turns out I didn't plan as well as I had thought.
> 
> But good news: while I've been taking ages to produce something short and not that exciting, some of you have been doing some truly amazing work. I was absolutely honoured today: first, the wonderful [@quillnics](https://www.instagram.com/quillnics/) on Instagram did an absolutely beautiful drawing inspired by John and Roger's performance in the last chapter; it was done last week but I only just saw it! It is [here](https://www.instagram.com/p/BvoxVqDBlso/?) and it is absolutely stunning; you should all check it out because I am in love with it!
> 
> Then, the brilliant [Seldereus](https://ficbook.net/authors/480625) has taken the immense time and effort to translate this work into Russian! My own Russian is extremely limited but I've given it a go and have really enjoyed the opportunity to practice reading this, and now I know how to spell each of our boys' names in Cyrillic script! It's wonderful and if you do want to read this work in Russian, the translation is available [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/8108567).
> 
> And an update - I've just heard the fantastic [BohemianBeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BohemianBeth) has also written a new bodyswap fic!! I have just read it and it is AMAZING, so whimsical and with a great tone that really made me smile and even laugh out loud - you should all check it out [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18376310/chapters/43515425)! I only just found out about all these - you all have got to tell me when you do a thing because I'm so keen to check them all out but I'm constantly running out of time to keep up to date with the fandom!!
> 
> I am seriously so honoured and blown away by the reception to this fic, not only by the amazing work by @quillnics, BohemianBeth and Sedereus but by everyone who has read, commented, or left kudos - you guys put such a big smile on my face and it really makes me feel amazing - often I read your comments if I'm at work and feeling stressed and they make me feel so much better. I know I can be awful at responding quickly; I work full time and am out most nights of the week and I usually want to give a well thought out reply, but I read each and every one of them and really appreciate them, and I respond to them all in the end!
> 
> Anyway, that's it for the longest author note in the world... on with the chapter.

“Can I ask you something, Roger?” Deaky asked as Roger straightened up one of the foldable tables stacked in the back of the van so it wasn’t in so much danger of falling out when they re-opened the doors.

“Sure,” said Roger, closing the van door with a metallic slamming sound. 

“You spend a lot of time with Freddie. Do people make fun of him?”

“Well, yeah,” said Roger easily, turning so his back was leaning against the closed van door. “People make fun of both of us. Call us poofters, fairies… stuff like that.” He crossed his arms and shrugged. “It kind of comes with the territory when you dress like we do and are involved in fashion.”

Deaky hesitated. He had certainly been dressing more conservatively than Freddie normally did, and no one had said anything like that to him in all these days he had been helping Roger at the market. Roger had also been dressing more conservatively than he normally did, although with the cold weather and Brian’s long limbs, Roger was mostly restricted to only wearing clothes that actually belonged to Brian. “Oh,” said Deaky slowly. “I actually meant something else… things people say only to Freddie, not you.”

Roger’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What happened, Deaky?” he asked bluntly. 

John grimaced. He hadn’t been too subtle. But Deaky couldn’t stand not knowing more about it, and Roger was his best bet without involving Freddie himself. “When I went Christmas shopping yesterday, a man called me a paki,” he explained. He left out the details, left out how he had been grabbed and tossed around and accused of theft and that no one had come to his aid, that they had all just watched. 

Roger’s lips parted, and his eyebrows creased in concern. “Oh, Deaky, I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I guess yeah, people have said that to Freddie before. Haven’t you seen it happening?” 

“Yes, but it’s different when it happens to you. I just feel weird about it,” Deaky confessed. “I’ve never had that happen before. People have insulted me, but this man didn’t even know me.”

Roger said nothing, just nodded and listened. 

“I hope this is okay to say,” Deaky continued slowly, hoping he didn’t offend Roger, “but it feels different to being called a poofter because of how you dress. I was just dressed like normal. There wasn’t anything I could have done… I just look like a paki.”

Roger nodded again, still not saying anything. Deaky was under the impression he was lost for words. Deaky couldn’t blame him. Roger might have seen it happening more often than Deaky had, but it wasn’t something he ever would have experienced himself. 

“Freddie's never talked about it, not as far as I've heard,” Deaky said. “Doesn’t it bother him?”

Roger shrugged. “I’m not sure that it would,” he said. “Freddie just doesn’t seem to get bothered by things. Maybe he’s used to it.”

Deaky clenched his jaw. Roger had been Freddie’s best friend for years, whereas John was just the newest member of the band who didn’t feel he knew the others all that well, but he couldn’t help but think Roger didn’t really know what he was talking about. He couldn’t imagine ever getting used to his kind deeds being misinterpreted as thievery, or crowds regarding him with suspicion. Maybe Freddie had just never shared how it felt with Roger. 

“Anyway,” John said hesitantly, not really wanting to continue their present topic if Roger didn’t understand what he was talking about, “I didn’t end up finding anything for Christmas for my mum or Julie. I was wondering, would you help me?”

Unexpectedly, Roger smiled at that. It didn’t look like one of his usual smiles back when he had his own body, when his grin would light up a room, and it didn’t look like one of Brian’s smiles either. Still, it was nice to see; Roger hadn’t really been smiling much lately. “Sure,” he said. “What are they like?”

The market was already closed for the day, hence John and Roger packing away their stock and tables, so Deaky told Roger about his mother and sister on the way to one of Roger’s favourite shopping haunts. John didn’t care much for shopping, not like Roger and Freddie, and he was too frugal to get any real pleasure out of it, so he was happy to have someone else take charge. When Roger parked the van on the street he’d chosen, John looked outside at the frankly bohemian atmosphere. There were art stores and clothing stores, their merchandise almost spilling haphazardly onto the footpath; tiny, dark, cramped cafes with young, attractive patrons dressed in long, flowing clothes; and stores John couldn’t recognise, because their signs looked to be in Japanese or Chinese or Hindi. When Roger climbed out of the car, he made for one of the latter stores. John followed along, a little awed by the atmosphere.

The smell of the shop was oppressive when John walked in, like someone had dumped a perfume bottle upside down and hadn’t bothered cleaning it up. John wanted to grab his nose, but he didn’t out of respect (or perhaps fear) for the small older woman sitting behind the desk, whom Roger nodded at when he walked in. Roger was moving with such confidence that John wondered if he knew the woman, and was only not speaking to her because he didn’t look like himself. 

The shop was rather overstocked for the floor space they had available. Deaky wouldn’t have known where to begin; most of the items looked extremely foreign. Roger led him to the rear, where there were sticks and ornamental paper, and leaned down to pick up a small metal jar. “This is an idea,” he said, showing it to John. “You said your mum was interested in art. This is henna; they use it in a lot of parts of Asia and Africa for drawing and doing body art. It’s something unique and special, and it’s not very expensive.”

John’s eyebrows raised as he took the jar. It was silver and had a rather nice design on the top - it did indeed look like something special. When he turned it over, he saw it only cost ninety pence. “Wow,” said John. “I was just going to get her some nice kitchenware or something.”

Roger grimaced. “Never get a woman kitchenware, John,” Roger said, and John blushed at the exasperation in his voice, and nodded. “Really, though,” continued Roger as though nothing had happened, “do you think this is something your mum would like?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “She keeps saying she’s been meaning to get back into art, but hasn’t had the time.”

“This shows you’re listening to her then,” said Roger. “When you give it to her, tell her you know she’s been wanting to do more art, and ask her to make sure she takes some time to pursue her own passions, because she’s been so stressed looking after everyone and you want her to be happy. She’ll love it if you say it like that.”

Deaky looked up at Roger’s face. He’d been looking so unhappy lately, and this was perhaps the first time John had really seen him animated in a while. John hated to spoil his mood again, but he couldn’t stop the smile from drifting off his face. “Except I’m not going to be the one who gets to give it to her,” he said.

Exactly as John had expected, Roger’s face fell too, and he said, “Oh,” softly.

John sighed, glancing down at the jar in his hand. “Thank you, Roger. Really. I know she’ll love this, even if I’m not there.”

Deaky bought the henna, in the end, while Roger bought a himself a new shirt. Julie was a little more difficult to shop for, and Roger tried a number of suggestions that Deaky rejected either because he didn’t think the gift was right or because it was too expensive, but John eventually settled on buying her theatre tickets so they could spend some time together. They hadn’t seen each other very much in the past few years, and now that John was likely not going to be the one who would get to go to Christmas, he felt an urge to reconnect when he eventually had the opportunity. 

Hungry after making their purchases, they decided to stop at one of the little cafes for a late lunch. Roger, who had mostly been letting Brian order whatever vegetarian food he thought would be good, spent a long while with the menu before deciding soup would be safe, while Deaky decided to try some channa dahl, which he knew would be dairy free as it was something Freddie often chose. 

“Is this going to be your first Christmas away from your family?” Roger asked Deaky after they had placed their orders. 

John nodded, biting his lip as he thought about it. His family was quiet. Sometimes he wished they were more exuberant, wished they were one of those families who called every few days to see how he was and cried with happiness when he shared one of his accomplishments, but now that he was cut off from them, he couldn’t help missing his mother’s soft voice on the other end of the phone, or missing the way his father's eyes shone with pride when John showed him something he had built. 

His family was, if anything, the polar opposite to the raucousness that was Freddie, Brian and Roger. He had been missing that more and more recently, even before Mrs. Finch had snapped him into Freddie’s body. 

“What do you usually do for Christmas?” Roger pressed. His tone of voice was a little more tense than the situation warranted, but Roger had generally been sounding a bit tense recently. Deaky was mostly ignoring it; supposing that Roger was probably not coping well with being switched into Brian’s body (and really, he had every right not to cope well with that) and not wanting to provoke him in case he got angry.

Deaky shrugged in answer to Roger’s question. “My mum makes a roast,” he said softly. Part of him didn’t really want to talk about this, but the bigger part was clinging on to the memories, even if the only person he was able to share with was his friend. “My grandparents used to come over, but my grandmother died a few years ago and my grandfather’s in a nursing home, so we go and see him in the afternoon…” He drifted off. He didn’t usually like to think about his grandfather; it was too painful to remember the man he used to be and reconcile him with the stranger he was left with now. “It’s normal, I guess.”

Roger nodded, playing with a fork and trying to balance it on its end on the table. “You should do something anyway,” he said. “With Brian. It’s not fair that you have to miss out on something you love because of a curse.”

He nearly spat the final word, and the fork was driven deep enough into the table that when it was removed, there were four indents in the wood where the prongs had been.

Deaky was spared answering immediately by the arrival of their food. They both thanked the waitress, and Deaky ate a spoonful of the dahl. His eyes watered: it was a little spicier than he had anticipated. 

“Doing something with Brian is a nice idea,” he said carefully, taking a sip of water. 

“He’s not a bad cook, really,” continued Roger. “I’m sure he can whip up a roast tofu block that almost tastes like food.”

John couldn’t help the sudden laugh that came up from his throat, which didn’t help the running from his nose caused by the spicy dahl. Roger’s face finally softened then, and a small smile appeared on his face as he finally let the tension go from his shoulders. 

“Now that you mention that, I think we might just stick to carols,” John said, grinning. “What were you and Freddie planning on doing?”

Roger shrugged. “Drinking, I guess,” he mumbled. “We don’t really care that much about Christmas.”

“Aren’t you going to miss your family?” John hoped he didn’t sound as stupid as he felt. While most of the time being the youngest did not really bother him, sometimes he felt it acutely. It was embarrassing to be the only one pining over a Christmas with his mother - he had been hoping that Roger, who was only a little older, would feel the same.

But Roger only shrugged. “I see them at other times,” he said. “Christmas was never a huge thing for us, and Mum likes to go down to southern Europe to get away from the gloom at this time of year. To be honest, I’m relieved I don’t have to come up with some excuse to stop Brian from going; you’ve seen how he is with his own family.”

John laughed again, though this time it was more of a warm hearted chuckle. He liked hanging out with Roger. They hadn’t spent much time together recently just as friends with all the stress of coming up with a new album and the fighting that accompanied that. It was hard maintaining a friendship and trying to keep that separate from the business partner who didn’t let him have any input, and John hated to admit that he had slowly begun seeing the others as business partners more than he saw them as friends. He certainly wasn’t the only one at fault for that, but maybe if this whole awful situation had one silver lining, it was that he had been able to try some new things, and make new connections with his friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please do leave a comment!! Sorry this one was a bit shorter and with less action; I wanted to do some setup and check back in with Deaky and Roger. They're one of my favourite friendships and I find them really interesting!
> 
> Unfortunately update times might slow down a little. The Christmas chapters are coming and they are looking like being both long and complicated so it might take me a while to write properly. I hope you do enjoy them; I'm looking forward to them myself!


	10. Freddie's Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freddie experiences his first English Christmas, but not everything is rosy in the Deacon family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Gosh, this took ages to write, and is the longest chapter so far in this fic. This is the first of the Christmas chapters. Each guy will have his own Christmas chapter, and we kick things off with Freddie!
> 
> I've updated the tags, so if you have concerns about triggers I recommend having another read over them. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who is still reading. It really means a huge deal. This story is now over 30,000 words and is I think the longest thing I've ever written. I really couldn't have done it without your support, and I really, really appreciate it.
> 
> Just a quick note on this chapter, for those who may not know, the Cowboy Song was the name Freddie gave Bohemian Rhapsody while he was still writing it.
> 
> A note on the Christmas chapters as a whole: their families feature heavily, and are basically completely fictional. The names are right but I haven't gone any further on researching than what's blatantly on the surface there. I feel a bit weird about prying into the lives of people who never chose fame so I really haven't researched much at all, so please excuse any inaccuracies if you happen to know differently.

The evening of December 24th sent a cold snap around southern England. Sleet turned into snow, and the wind made a harsh whistling sound in the tiny hidden gaps of Freddie and Roger’s cheaply built flat. Inside, the four young men shivered in their blankets until they decided a little extra heat would be worth the cost, and they slept most of the night with radiators running strong.

Freddie woke up the next morning with his gut twisted in anxiety. He had been trying not to think too much about how he would have to substitute in for Deaky at Christmas with his family, but now that the moment had come, his mind was rattling with all the potential situations that might occur. 

The truth was, Freddie had never experienced a normal English Christmas. He and Kash had tried, when they were younger, to get their parents to take on the Christmas traditions like the other parents, but they had been resistant to the idea, saying that Christmas was not in their culture. When that failed, he had even tried to get them to move their celebration of Maidyarem Gahanbar, the Parsi annual winter festival, to a week earlier so that he and Kash could have some kind of occasion, but his parents had been unwilling to budge on that. Freddie thought that a little unreasonable, as they had no Zoroastrian neighbours and it would have bothered nobody to switch the timing slightly, but his parents had been firm.

Since leaving home, Freddie had just spent Christmas either alone or with Roger, and their observance usually ended at the mulled wine. He had no idea what a real family Christmas was supposed to be like. He had read about it and seen it in films, but that wasn’t enough to prepare him for the real thing, especially when he was supposed to be pretending to be Deaky, who had been doing this all his life. 

Thinking of John himself made Freddie’s gut twinge uncomfortably again, and it wasn’t entirely related to his nervousness at carrying off an English Christmas. Watching John perform the other night had been exhilarating in a way Freddie had not expected, and had not prepared for. Now, when he thought about the very real possibility of John leaving the band and leaving him behind with it, his heart ached in a way with which he was unfamiliar, and uncomfortable.

Freddie decided to push those thoughts to the back of his mind. He could hear hushed voices from the living room, which meant somebody was up. Freddie’s stomach growled, and he stood up and shrugged on a dressing gown to ward off the cool air.

Brian and Roger looked up sharply when Freddie emerged from his bedroom, and the hushed voices ceased immediately. Freddie briefly wondered where John was, but then heard the sound of the shower running. Roger and Brian both looked a little guilty, and Freddie wondered what they had been talking about.

“Merry Christmas, Freddie,” said Brian lightly. Roger looked a little sick, and Freddie imagined he probably felt just as nervous as he himself did at the prospect of spending Christmas with Brian’s family.

“Merry Christmas,” Freddie repeated absently.

Freddie joined Roger on the sofa (still sitting on top of the sheets that had been there since Brian and Deaky had begun sleeping over, which were beginning to get a little ripe), and they waited while Brian pottered around in the kitchen making porridge. Freddie got the distinct impression he and Roger were sitting here awaiting execution.

Brian finished with the porridge just as John came out of the bathroom, and, ever the gentleman, he served each of them up a bowl. Despite his nerves, Freddie did have to once again marvel at Brian’s ongoing ability to keep them fed even when the world was falling apart. Freddie and Roger could hardly cook toast, and they ate out for most meals, but Brian had been cooking non stop for over two weeks without complaint.

Freddie hadn’t realised until now that he had never really thanked Brian for that.

“I’m not hungry,” Roger mumbled when Brian tried to hand him a bowl. 

“Eat anyway,” said Brian, pushing the bowl into Roger’s hands, who took it reluctantly. 

John sat down in the armchair he seemed to have adopted as his own, while Brian settled on the floor, and they all ate in uncomfortable silence. 

After they had finished, Brian collected their bowls to go and wash up. Deaky produced what looked like an old woman’s woven shopping bag from the small pile that now occupied the corner of the living room and served as his and Brian’s closet, and he handed it to Freddie. When Freddie looked inside, he saw wrapping paper and fancy looking envelopes, and Deaky explained which gift was for which of his family members.

“How does this work, though?” Freddie asked. “Do I give them presents as soon as I walk in, or what?” 

“Er, no,” said Deaky. “Just ring the doorbell and say hello. We put our presents under the tree in the living room; Mum or Dad will probably show you where that is…” 

“But I’m supposed to just know this,” Freddie said, his voice rising in pitch as he began to feel panicked once again. Deaky had explained most things to him already about what was going to happen, but there were so many variables, and Freddie was starting to feel quite panicked. “I’ve never been to Christmas in my life; I’ve never even met your parents - what if I call your aunt Mum?”

“I don’t have any aunts,” said Deaky. “It’s just my family. You’ll be okay, Freddie, I promise. We don’t do anything fancy; we just sit around the tree and open presents and then eat food.”

Despite Deaky’s reassurances, Freddie really didn’t feel much better about the whole thing, and by the time he found a seat on the train up to Leicester, the knot of anxiety in his stomach had started to make him tense up enough that his muscles were cramping. In one hand, he had the woven shopping bag with the presents, and in the other, he carried the notebook in which he wrote his song ideas, now also containing an address, directions and a hastily written description of John’s parents’ house to help him find it. Freddie had an appalling sense of direction, and the idea of trying to find the house in a new city all alone was something that was almost as terrifying as Christmas itself. 

There was nothing that could be done on the train ride itself though, so Freddie opened up his notebook. He had been writing a lot of music recently; it felt like the only thing he could do at the moment, sidelined as he was by Deaky’s rather unimpressive voice and the sudden panic that had barred him from helping Roger out at the markets. His songs had begun as high-energy and even perhaps angry, but ever since Roger had confessed to him that he didn’t think they were ever going to be able to fix this mess they were in, his songs had become slower and sadder. The past four days, he had been working almost exclusively on the lyrics for the Cowboy Song. It had always been something near and dear to his heart, but recently the song had morphed until Freddie hardly recognised it - it was like the song was discovering Freddie instead of the other way around. He hadn’t shared it yet with the rest of the band. It felt special to him, more personal than anything he had made previously, and the idea of sharing it before he was finished felt somehow like standing naked in front of his friends and awaiting judgment. No, Freddie wasn’t quite ready yet.

Freddie got off the train at Leicester and then made his way to where the buses were leaving for various points around the city. When he checked back at John’s directions in his notebook, he breathed a sigh of relief; the directions were very clear and precisely matched what he saw. He found the little metal structure that his bus was supposed to leave from, and settled in for a wait that, due to Christmas, was supposed to be a good twenty five minutes, according to the timetable printed by the side of the structure. 

By the time he eventually arrived at the address in his notebook, it was rather late in the morning, and Freddie hoped John’s family wouldn’t be upset; he knew his own parents were often upset with him when he showed up late to things. After all, it was one thing meeting Deaky’s parents as himself - he was sure they would be polite to him in that instance - but meeting them as John? Freddie didn’t know the first thing about John’s family, but he knew families could be complicated, and hidden feuds and fights were not uncommon. What if John’s parents really did get upset with him?

Freddie made his way up the short garden path to the dark-bricked house and paused at the door. The house itself looked the same as the houses on either side, and despite reading the directions he had been given three times and making sure this was number twenty-two, he had the sudden thought that this might actually be John’s parents’ neighbour’s house, which would be catastrophically embarrassing. Still, Freddie was almost sure he had gotten it right, and second guessing himself any further was only going to make him even later, so he reached up and pressed the small button to ring the doorbell.

The loud buzzing that accompanied his press seemed to ring in his ears in the silent seconds afterwards. Freddie didn't have long to prepare himself, because suddenly he could hear footsteps over the loud pounding of his heart, and then the door was opened and a woman who looked to be slightly older than Freddie’s own mother appeared in the doorway. 

“Hello John,” she said in a warm voice, and then she stepped forward and pulled Freddie into a hug.

Freddie’s nose was suddenly engulfed in greying wavy hair, and arms were wrapped around his middle. Awkwardly, Freddie leaned forward and hugged her back. He hoped she didn’t notice how stiffly he was standing, or how his heart was pounding. 

She broke off the hug, and Freddie finally got a good look at her. She was a little shorter than her son, and a little plain looking. She had no more fashion sense than John himself, and Freddie wagered she had bought that blouse in the sixties. Still, her face was kind, and her eyes crinkled in the corners when she smiled just like John’s did. 

“Merry Christmas,” she said. 

“Merry Christmas to you too,” murmured Freddie.

She turned away suddenly, nodding in the direction of the corridor as though beckoning Freddie to follow her. Freddie wondered, as he stepped into the house, if this was the home John had grown up in, or if his parents had moved here after he’d gone to London for university. He grinned as John’s mother took him down the corridor - the side of the stairway was adorned in pictures, most of them featuring a young John or Julie. John sometimes acted like he was born in his fifties, so the pictures were rather amusing to look at. 

John’s mother (Lily, Freddie’s mind supplied) led him off into a room on the left, which appeared to be the living room judging from the rather sad looking sofa and the fireplace. Dominating the room was a large Christmas tree in the corner, held up by some red metal sculpture at its base and filling the room with the smell of pine. There was a small pile of wrapped presents at its base. It looked just like the Christmas trees you found in stores, except a little smaller.

Freddie didn’t have much time to take in his surroundings, or even place his presents under the tree as John had instructed, because suddenly he noticed the man standing up from the sofa. He looked older still than Lily did, his hair starting to thin and wrinkles set deep into his forehead. Still, he smiled kindly at Freddie, even when he stood there awkwardly, not knowing quite how he was supposed to behave. Freddie was a hugger, but he knew most men, including John, hugged rarely or not at all, not even their fathers. 

Not hugging seemed to be the right move, because Arthur nodded and smiled warmly, his own hands deep in his pockets. 

“Merry Christmas, John,” said Arthur. His voice was warm and gravelly, and not at all like John’s voice. 

“Merry Christmas,” Freddie repeated. He got the impression he would be saying that rather a lot today. 

“How have you been?” Arthur asked. 

Almost against his will, the corner of Freddie’s mouth twitched, and he couldn’t help looking down. It wasn’t really a question, just a polite greeting, and Arthur wasn’t actually looking for an answer, but Freddie was suddenly painfully aware that he wasn’t Arthur’s son. He was an imposter, here only by an evil spell and a freak chance. 

Freddie never did end up answering Arthur, but it didn’t seem to matter. Soon he was placing his presents under the tree, arranging them to the cards taped to the top were in the prime display position, and Lily was walking over to the stairs to try and coax the teenaged Julie out of bed. 

Arthur seemed content to sit in silence while they waited, and Freddie, not knowing what to say, was quiet as well. Freddie figured that if he were at home with his own parents, it would be a comfortable silence, but as it was, Freddie wasn’t really sure how he should behave. John had told him about what his parents’ house looked like and what they did when they passed around presents, but no amount of talking was going to prepare Freddie for what could only be described as an infiltration mission into a nice suburban family home.

He heard footsteps descending the stairs, and then Lily came back into the room, followed by a bleary-eyed girl in her late teens. Julie was rather tall for a woman, probably near Freddie’s usual height, and her hair looked a lot like her brother’s. She smiled at Freddie when she walked in, but didn’t say anything. Freddie understood her silence; he remembered how difficult it had been waking up in the morning when he had been a teenager. 

“It really is wonderful having you back for Christmas, John,” Lily said, sitting down on the sofa next to her husband. Freddie stayed on the floor by the tree, and he figured that was a good place to sit when Julie joined him, wrapping her dressing gown tightly around herself. “Your father and I are very proud of you, with everything you’ve been achieving. You’re earning your own money, about to graduate… it’s really wonderful, John. We’re very proud.”

Freddie squirmed, his palms suddenly sweaty and his face heating up. “Thanks, Mum,” he said, the final word leaving a strange feeling in his mouth. He felt so out of place.

“Can we open presents now?” Julie asked, sounding a little miffed. Freddie wondered if she was feeling left out by the praise that had just been heaped on her brother. It was a familiar idea to Freddie, who had brought home artworks and sequined shirts while Kash brought home A’s. Freddie wished he had something to say that would make her feel better, but he really didn’t know enough about her. 

Passing around the presents went exactly as Freddie had imagined it from the films. Julie began, finding presents for her mother and another for John (which was handed to Freddie). Following her lead, Freddie looked through the cards on the presents to find one for Julie.

They opened them once the pile had been distributed. Freddie found himself holding a book from Julie, a hand-knitted sweater from John’s mother and a box from his father that contained, when Freddie opened it, a selection of very small screwdrivers. Freddie recognised them as electronics screwdrivers, and was touched on John’s behalf: John had wanted better equipment to play with but had always felt it was an unnecessarily expensive extravagance. 

Freddie thanked each of John’s family members and put the presents back into the shopping bag he had brought with him. He looked around. Deaky’s father had understood immediately what the tape deck was and was smiling as he looked inside; Deaky had included a recording of one of Queen’s new songs. Lily, however, looked a little confused by the jar she had been given, and was reading the label with interest. 

“It’s henna,” Freddie explained, trying to remember what he had been told by Deaky. “You haven’t painted in a while… I wanted you to have something new to try so you can get back into it.”

“Oh John, that’s very kind of you,” said Lily softly, and now there was a small smile on her face. “Thank you, dear.”

Freddie couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. It may not have been his family, but this was what he had been wanting from Christmas with his own family; a tree that filled the room with the smell of pine, and the happy looks on everyone’s faces when they received their gifts. 

He turned to Julie, who was reading the card Deaky had written her, holding the theatre tickets in her hand. “I know I haven’t been around so much recently,” began Freddie, “but I wanted to find something we could do together.” Freddie had remembered that part of what John had told him to say. Deaky had told Freddie that he had started to feel badly about how little he had seen his sister. It was strange that now Deaky wasn’t able to see Julie at all, he had suddenly realised how deeply he wanted a relationship with her. Freddie had been more active in his family life than John had been recently, and he had to acknowledge that he would also have felt quite bad if he hadn’t seen Kash in some months.

Julie wrapped her arm around her knees. She looked like she was trying to hide an involuntary smile, but she nodded anyway, and Freddie knew she was pleased. 

The theatre tickets were for a show in April. Deaky had done that deliberately, wanting time so he could get back into his own body and actually participate in his own family time, rather than sending Freddie in his place. Two weeks ago, Freddie would have been filled with optimism at the awkward smile on Julie’s face, knowing that John would get what he needed. But Roger’s words were echoing in the back of his mind, his doubts infecting Freddie like a virus. They had been promised a resolution if they understood one another, but Freddie wasn’t sure what more they could possibly do on that front. They had had a long conversation about their fighting, Freddie had been dealing with the panic attacks that plagued Deaky, and now he was at his family’s private Christmas gathering - what more could he possibly do to try and better understand Deaky? 

After they had finished with the presents, Lily made to return to the kitchen where the delicious smell of roast lamb was mingling with the pine from the tree in a wonderful, _Christmassy_ way. Freddie offered to help her, mostly to avoid as much conversation as possible so as to not get caught out as the imposter he was, and Lily had him set the table with plates and cutlery and the Christmas crackers Freddie often saw in store. When he was finished, the table looked as festive as anything Freddie had ever seen in a magazine, and he had to wonder why he and Roger were always too lazy to do anything nice like this. They never even got each other presents. 

They sat down to eat as a family. The food was divine, especially, as Deaky had promised, the roast potatoes. Arthur told some funny stories he had picked up from work, and Freddie answered questions about how university was going as vaguely as he could while still being polite. Julie, who Freddie was swiftly figuring out was a teenager in the truest sense of the word, wasn’t talking much, and was answering in one word answers whenever she could.

She pulled a couple of Christmas crackers with Freddie, though, and laughed when Freddie pulled far too hard and ended up smacking himself in the face with the cracker. Freddie wore the cheap paper crown and read aloud the terrible joke, and smiled broadly when the other three laughed; more at how bad the joke was than any real humour.

Deaky had been telling the truth about his family being friendly. Freddie really was having the family Christmas he’d always wanted. 

“John, love, here,” Lily said suddenly, putting a Christmas card in front of Freddie as Arthur washed the dishes and Julie dried. “Sign this card for your grandfather, please.”

Freddie took the card and the pen she handed him. Deaky had told him two days ago about his grandfather, that Freddie would have to visit him, that it could be confronting meeting someone with advanced dementia. Freddie had never even been in a nursing home before - his grandfather had died of a heart attack when he was still fit, and his grandmother had been cared for by his aunt until she died peacefully. England was rather different in how it treated its elderly than India had been, but Freddie wasn’t especially worried, not now that he had seen how John’s family were. 

The card was simple. It had a Christmas tree on the front, and the inside had a cursive “Merry Christmas” printed by the manufacturer. Around it, somebody, probably Lily, had written a message. 

_Dear Dad/Granddad,_

_Have a very merry Christmas and a wonderful new year. We love you very much._

_Love,_

_Lilian, Arthur, Julie_

The three names at the end were each written in a different hand, and Freddie added “John” to the end, trying to make it as close to John’s own writing as he could.

Once the dishes were finished, the Deacon family (plus Freddie) all climbed into Arthur’s Ford and headed off, Arthur driving rather slowly due to the still hazardous conditions. Freddie was sitting in the back with Julie, who had brought her hairbrush into the car with her and was running it through her brown hair, letting the loose strands drop into the footwell.

“So what happened to your car then, John?” Julie asked suddenly. “Why didn’t you drive up?”

“Er,” said Freddie, trying to think of a good reason that wouldn’t get himself or John into too much trouble. _I’m not really your brother and I don’t know how to drive_ wasn’t an excuse that was really going to go down very well. “I need to get new tyres,” he said eventually.

“Do you need money?” Arthur asked immediately. 

“No, no!” Freddie said, shaking his head. Deaky was fiercely independent. Freddie admired that about him, but he wouldn’t be too happy if Freddie ended up taking money from his parents. “I just thought with the snow and all, it would be safer to take the train.”

“That’s very sensible,” murmured Lily.

Out of the corner of his eye, Freddie saw Julie roll her eyes. He was having a difficult time figuring her out. She had seemed genuinely pleased at the idea of going to the theatre with her brother, and yet all day there had been a slight hostility simmering under the surface. It had come out when she had tried to change the subject earlier when John’s parents had been telling Freddie how proud they were, and here it was again when Lily praised his judgment. At his best guess, Freddie supposed Julie might not be getting as much praise as her older brother, who was almost an electrical engineer and had his own flat, a car and even a record contract. 

“Um, so Julie,” Freddie began, deciding to take a risk based on something he remembered John saying a few weeks ago, “tell me about that writing prize you won. That must have been incredibly exciting.”

“Oh,” said Julie. Her frown suddenly disappeared, and she looked pleased; Freddie’s gamble paid off. Julie spent the rest of the car trip telling Freddie about the story she had written for a competition among students around England. She had written about a teenage girl who was having relationship difficulties with her mother, except had taken the braver choice to write from the mother’s perspective. She had won fifty pounds for her efforts, and Freddie could tell from the way she had suddenly opened up that she had been dying to talk about her achievement. 

They parked on a side street and made their way through the slush towards the nursing home Deaky’s grandfather was living at. It would have looked like any normal house, if not for the large fence around it. They weren’t able to simply walk in the front door; Arthur had to ring a buzzer so a nurse could come and let them into the building.

The first thing Freddie noticed when he walked in was the smell. It smelled strongly of antiseptic, even more so than a hospital. It was so strong that Freddie could hardly stop his hands flying up to cover his nose when he walked in. The second thing he noticed was the lighting. Despite it being a grey Christmas day, there was plenty of natural light outside, and yet the inside was almost aggressively fluorescent. It only added to the artificial quality of the interior of the building, and set Freddie on edge. 

“Merry Christmas!” said the nurse who had let them in, her voice bright as though she wasn’t bothered by the light or smell. “Who are you after, then?”

Freddie guessed that this nurse must be new, and must not know the Deacons yet.

“We’re looking for Joseph Perkins,” said Arthur.

“Joe’s back in his room,” said the nurse immediately, not checking any sort of register. She must have already known where Joseph Perkins was. “Would you like me to show you?” 

“No, no,” said Arthur, “we know the way.”

Freddie, who didn’t know the way, followed the others as Arthur led them down a corridor. They were passed by a white-haired woman, back bowed from age and leaning on a walking frame. She was mumbling to herself, and when she reached Freddie, he could just make out the words.

“God, help me… God, help me…”

Freddie had been feeling reasonably calm until that moment, but suddenly his heart began pounding again, and he stifled a gasp. The woman continued on her route as though she had not noticed the family, and the Deacons kept walking in the other direction, as though they, too, had not seen the woman. 

Joe’s room, when they reached it, was small. It contained a single bed and an armchair, and a bookshelf that was so full the shelves had started to sag with the weight from the books. Sitting in the armchair was a tall, thin, bald man wearing thick glasses, dressed in trousers and a button up shirt with a dressing gown wrapped over the top.

“Hello, Dad,” Lily said, brushing past Arthur to give her father a hug. “Merry Christmas.”

Joe grunted in response, not returning the season’s greeting. There was tinsel laid along the window sill, but apart from that you would never have known it was Christmas inside the room. 

Freddie found himself instinctively hanging back against one wall. If he didn’t feel like he was intruding earlier, he certainly did now. Lily’s smile looked forced, like it wasn’t reaching her eyes, and it faltered a little further when her father didn’t immediately acknowledge her. This felt intensely private, and Freddie felt the desperate urge to flee. 

“How are you, Joe?” Arthur asked, in a loud and falsely cheery voice. 

Joe turned his eyes on Arthur. He stared at him for about a minute, but didn’t respond. 

“We got you a card,” said Lily, reaching into her handbag to pull the Christmas card out and hand it to her father. 

This did get a reaction. Joe took the card from her and opened it, reading what was written inside. “Lilian,” he mumbled to himself when he finished reading, then looked back up at Lily. “Lilian,” he said again, sounding more sure. “It’s Christmas?”

Despite the confusion about the date, Lily smiled. It was the first genuine smile Freddie had seen cross her face since they walked in here, but that only made his stomach sink further. Was this his future? Would he one day be relieved his father knew his name?

“Yes, Dad, it’s Christmas,” said Lily, laying her hand on her father’s frail shoulder. 

Joe looked back at the card again. “Arthur,” he said slowly, then, “Julie.” He nodded at the last name, looking up and spotting his granddaughter. 

Julie had been hanging back with Freddie, but now she stepped over and leaned down to hug Joe. “Merry Christmas, Granddad,” she said softly. 

Joe looked back down at the card again, and then his vacant eyes swept over the room “Where’s John?” he asked.

Freddie’s fists clenched as all three members of the Deacon family turned to look at him. There was concern and sadness written over all of their faces, and Freddie wanted none of that. This was private. He shouldn’t be here, and the only one who seemed to recognise that was Joe. 

“What do you mean, Dad?” Lily asked, a hint of desperation in her voice. “John’s right there, see?”

She pointed, and Joe’s gaze fixed on Freddie. Freddie didn’t know how to react, so he stood stock still, his hands clenched involuntarily and his mouth dry. 

“That’s not John,” said Joe. “I don’t know who that is.”

Lily frowned, distress plain on her features as she looked desperately between her father and Freddie. “It’s alright,” Freddie said, his voice coming out more quietly than he had intended. “It’s okay, really. I’ll just wait outside.”

“But John -“ Lily began.

“No.” Freddie swallowed and nodded. “It’s honestly fine. Take as long as you need.”

With that, Freddie turned and left the room, closing the door to give the Deacons some privacy. He heard footsteps in the corridor, and when he looked, he saw the elderly woman from earlier making her way around again, still muttering the same disturbing phrase to herself. 

Freddie wrapped his arms around himself. Suddenly, the cheer of his first English Christmas had vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, please do leave a comment! I love to discuss aspects of this and I really love hearing your thoughts. 
> 
> The next chapter will be Brian's Christmas! Hopefully it won't take so long to get done...


	11. Brian's Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian prepares to have Christmas with Deaky, but an unexpected visitor derails their plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you so, so much to everyone who is still here. It really means so much to me that you're still reading my fic (which is turning out to be a lot longer than the outline suggested). Thank you most especially to all the people who have been commenting. The comments really brighten my day and make me feel like it's all worth it!
> 
> This is a long one! Wrote most of it over Easter break, which is now over so unfortunately the next Christmas chapters probably won't come so fast. I will do my best though!

Brian woke early on Christmas morning. 

He shivered, drawing the borrowed blankets closer to his borrowed body. It was freezing cold, even with the old radiator doing everything it could to spit some warmth back into the room. His toes felt like ice blocks, and his ears almost felt like they were burning from the harsh temperature. It was still dark outside, but Freddie and Roger had a streetlamp not far from their place, so Brian was still able to make out the room me was in.

He drew the blankets closer around his shivering frame and slowly climbed up off the sofa cushions that had been laid out on the floor as a makeshift bed, having swapped sleeping arrangements with Deaky a few days ago. He made for the radiator on the wall, twiddling the knob to try and turn it up even higher. 

That was when he noticed the sound of the shower running. 

He looked over. There was light coming from the crack under the bathroom door. Deaky was still asleep, even if he did look half frozen to death. The door to Freddie’s room was closed, but Roger’s door was wide open, the room dark and vacant.

Brian bit his lip. He knew Roger was having trouble sleeping due to his own stupid insomnia, but he would have expected him to tire himself out by now. That was usually how things went for Brian: he’d have a week, ten days at the most, in which he could hardly sleep more than two or three hours, but then his body would give up and he’d sleep like the dead. As far as he knew, Roger hadn’t slept properly since this whole thing had started, and he was beginning to look rather sick. 

Brian hadn't mentioned it, but he had, tucked away in his own flat, a bottle of prescription sleeping pills. He didn’t like taking them himself, and only did as a last resort. He didn’t like the dreams they gave him, or how hungover he felt the next day, but they were a good last resort if he really wasn’t coping. He had been reluctant to share this information with Roger, given the younger man’s rather blasé attitude towards drugs and alcohol, but now he wondered if he should let him know. 

The shower was turned off, and a couple of minutes later Roger came out, dressed in pyjamas and a thick sweater, running a towel through his thick curls roughly. He paused when he noticed Brian, and his mouth quirked upwards in greeting. He turned and headed over to the kitchen, dumping his towel on the floor uncaringly. Brian followed, dragging the blankets with him like a train.

“Merry Christmas, Roger,” Brian murmured, keeping his voice low so as not to wake Deaky.

Roger switched on the kettle and took a couple of mugs from the dish rack to make instant coffee. “Mmm,” he said. “Merry Christmas to you too.”

They waited as the kettle boiled. The hissing of the kettle ended up being too loud for Deaky, who rolled over and sat up with a groan. He rubbed his eyes, looking blearily over at the others. “It’s dark,” he said stupidly.

“Merry Christmas, Deaks,” Brian said cheerily. “It’s only around seven.”

Deaky groaned again, clearly thinking seven o’clock was far too early, but he rolled over and climbed up from the sofa anyway, heading into the bathroom and closing the door. A minute later, the shower started running again. 

Roger poured out the hot water into the two coffee cups and pushed one over at Brian. He looked nervous, his eyes darting between Brian and the closed doors to Freddie’s room and the bathroom where Deaky was showering. Finally, he began to speak. “Brian, I’m not comfortable going to your parents’ house,” he said, so rapidly Brian almost missed some of the words. 

“What?” Brian asked, trying to keep his voice quiet. “What do you mean?”

Roger’s jaw clenched, his forehead screwing up in distress. “I’m just not comfortable with it, Brian!” he cried. “I’ll call them, I’m happy to say I’m sick -“

“Roger, you’re panicking,” rationalised Brian. “You’ll be fine. I promise.”

“I _won’t_ be fine!” Roger hissed, slamming his coffee mug down on the bench hard enough that some of it sloshed out. “I have to pretend to be _you_ at a family Christmas? Jesus, Brian, do you know what happens at family Christmases?”

Brian’s eyes narrowed. “What’s this really about?” he asked. “Because you know I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think you’d do a good job. You’re great at being me.” His mouth quirked up in a smile, but Roger still didn’t look convinced. “Look,” Brian said, setting his own mug down next to Roger’s, “if you really can’t go, you don’t have to. But I just want my parents to be able to have me home for Christmas; it would break their hearts if I wasn’t there. And anyway, we’re supposed to be trying to understand each other.”

Roger glared at him, but was prevented from answering by Freddie’s door opening, the older man stepping out with a glum look on his face and a dressing gown wrapped around his body. Freddie looked between the two of them, eyes narrowing, and Brian wondered if he had been listening. 

“Merry Christmas, Freddie,” he said, trying to forestall questions. Roger didn’t exactly look like he wanted to share his doubts. 

The remainder of the morning was quiet, the palpable anxiety coming from Freddie and Roger in waves and making even Brian nervous. Still, Brian ignored it and cooked a saucepan of porridge, making sure everyone ate some. Brian understood how nerves and sadness could sap one of their appetite, but he also understood the importance of eating anyway, even if you weren’t feeling good. His own bad moods were always made worse if he skipped out on eating, so he was fairly pedantic about mealtimes.

Freddie, who had further to go than Roger, left first. Deaky had managed to procure a few cheap Christmas decorations, and he went about putting them up around the small flat. Roger stayed where he was on the sofa, shoulders hunched and his nails in his teeth. Brian, fearing that Roger would start overthinking things again if left to his thoughts, tried to engage him in conversation. He tried talking about the snow; he tried asking what Roger usually did for Christmas when he did spend it with family; he even tried talking about music, which was a subject Roger would usually talk about for hours, but all his attempts were met with grunts or one word answers. 

Eventually Roger disappeared back into his room, and a minute later Brian heard the soft sound of a guitar being strummed, so he figured Roger at least had a distraction.

“What’s up with him?” Brian asked, turning to Deaky.

Deaky only shrugged. “I guess he’s still tired,” he guessed. “It’s strange though. I don’t remember you ever being this bad with sleep.”

Brian stared at the closed door, listening to the simple tune that was being played inside. Deaky was wrong about Brian never being this bad. He had been this bad when he was a teenager, but he’d mostly been better as an adult. He’d gotten a handle on things, and worst came to worst, he had medication. Maybe he really should give Roger the option of taking something. Brian was afraid of becoming addicted, but it wouldn’t hurt to just do it the once, and Roger really did seem to be in a bad way. 

Brian let Roger hide and play guitar until it was time for him to go. By then, Deaky had begun to turn the place into somewhere it would be acceptable to spend a Christmas in, even if it lacked a tree, and he was even pre-heating the oven for his attempt to make his mother’s roast potatoes. Brian knocked on the bedroom door and, without waiting for an answer, poked his head in.

Roger was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking miserable, and Brian did feel rather sorry for him, even if he really wanted Roger to go to his parents’ for Christmas. “You know, you don’t have to go, if you really can’t,” Brian offered at length.

Roger huffed out a sharp breath, glancing up at Brian with slightly narrowed eyes. “No, I’ll go,” he said forlornly. “You said it yourself; we’re supposed to be trying to understand each other. Besides, I want you to be happy.” He placed the guitar on the floor, leaning up against the bed, and stood up, reaching for the coat Brian had lent him while Roger was stuck in his body; his own clothes now too small. 

Brian swallowed, touched that Roger would care about him enough to push past his comfort zone and do something he obviously didn’t want to do. Roger did come across as brash and uncaring, but when he did decide to show his appreciation for his friends, he could be very sweet. “Thank you,” Brian said sincerely.

Roger bit his lip, hesitating one final time. “It is going to be okay though, right?” he asked. “Your family’s not in a weird cult or anything?”

Brian couldn’t help but chuckle, picturing Roger showing up to what he thought was a normal Christmas only to find Brian’s family in robes chanting around a fire. “No, I promise they’re nice and normal.”

Roger managed a tight smile, brushing past Brian into the living room. He picked up the rucksack into which Brian had packed his presents, and headed out the door, calling out a farewell to Deaky. Brian headed back into the living room, sharing a meaningful glance with Deaky in the kitchen. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people less excited for Christmas,” Deaky mused.

Brian shrugged. “Freddie’s never done Christmas before.”

“Roger has,” said Deaky. “He might even have been freaking out worse than Freddie.”

Brian looked back at the door Roger had just walked out of. Deaky was right. It wouldn’t exactly be easy, acting as Brian to his own family, but Roger’s reaction had been a little over the top. Brian suddenly felt a little guilty for hoarding the sleeping tablets. In trying to prepare for the extremely unlikely possibility that Roger would go overboard against Brian’s wishes, Brian had been withholding something that would help ease his friend’s suffering. Brian eyed Deaky again, remembering that night outside the club when Deaky had rather roughly shown Brian how he had been behaving. Roger hadn’t smoked, hadn’t eaten any meat, and hadn’t gone out to get sleeping pills from one of Freddie’s more nefarious sources. Why did Brian trust him so little?

That was a conversation Brian wasn’t sure he was ready to have with himself, so he pushed it to the back of his mind and offered to help John cut potatoes.

Between the two of them, they had peeled and cut almost enough potatoes to fill the tray Deaky had chosen when there was a sharp knock at the door. They both paused in their cutting, wondering who on earth would be bothering them on Christmas Day, and looked between one another. If Freddie or Roger had been expecting guests, they hadn’t told either of them.

The knock sounded again, and Deaky laid down his knife. “I’ll get it,” he said. “It’s probably just a neighbour out of salt.”

Brian nodded, resuming peeling the potatoes. He agreed with Deaky that it was probably just a neighbour, so didn’t pay too much attention to the voices coming from the door, until Deaky said, “Uh, Roger? You have a visitor.”

Brian’s eyes narrowed, and he laid down his own knife, coming over to the front door. Standing over the threshold was a young woman Brian wasn’t sure he recognised, though there did seem to be something familiar about her. She certainly seemed to know Roger, though, because Brian could barely begin to say “Hello” before she reached over and pulled him into a hug. Brian hugged her back, feeling awkward. 

“Merry Christmas, Roger!” she cried, sounding far too happy about the fact.

“Merry Christmas…” Brian said absently. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, the potato peeling being something that didn’t require it, but she wasn’t standing too far away so he could make out her features. She had blonde hair that reached just beyond her shoulders, large green eyes and a pretty face, and she stood half a head shorter than Brian did in Roger’s body. Brian tried to recall Roger’s past girlfriends, rather scared that this woman had decided to spring a pregnancy on Roger on Christmas Day, but he came up blank. He really didn’t think he had seen her before.

The woman’s face fell slightly at the long pause and Brian’s lack of reaction, and her eyes darted nervously between Brian and Deaky. “Um…” said Brian, not sure what else to say, “would you like to come in?”

“Actually,” she said, now sounding quite unsure of herself, “I was on my way to Mum and Dad’s.”

She finished there, not giving any context as to who her mother and father were, and that was when the penny dropped. She looked vaguely familiar because she looked like _Roger_ \- this was his sister, Clare. “Oh,” said Brian. 

Clare continued to watch him as though waiting for a further reaction, but Brian really had no idea what to say. Knowing who she was was a start, but she clearly thought Brian had more information on the topic than he really did, and it was too dangerous to ask her any questions that might betray the fact that Brian didn’t have Roger’s memories. He could end up in the nuthouse.

There was a stalemate for several long, awkward moments, but Clare broke first. “I was thinking, do you want to come? It’s okay if you don’t, but I’d really like you to come, and -“

“Come to Christmas at Mum and Dad’s?” Brian repeated blankly.

Clare nodded, and Brian looked over at Deaky, who shrugged, clearly just as at a loss as Brian was. Roger had told them his parents were in Spain.

But Clare looked incredibly anxious, even desperate. Brian had no clue what was going on, but he was sure Roger wouldn’t want him to leave his sister hanging when she had put herself out like this. “Okay,” said Brian slowly.

Clare almost sagged with relief, and Brian immediately felt that he had chosen well. She almost looked like she had expected him to start throwing things at the suggestion. “But I haven’t got any presents or anything.” 

“That’s okay; you can go in on mine,” offered Clare. “It’ll just be so good to have you there again.”

“Yeah,” said Brian numbly. “Uh, hold on, would you? Freddie, would you help me find my wallet?”

Brian and Deaky stepped back from the door, leaving it open so as not to be rude to Clare but moving far enough away from her that they could whisper without being overheard. 

“Do you know anything about what’s going on here?” Brian asked.

Deaky shrugged. “I just thought his parents were in Spain; I don’t know anything about his sister.”

Brian nodded slowly. He had expected as much. “Would it be okay with you if I went?” he asked. “I’m sorry; I know you wanted to spend today together… she just seems really upset.”

Deaky’s mouth quirked in a tight smile. “It’s okay,” he said. “She does seem upset.” He gazed over at the open door, where Clare was wringing her hands and moving her weight from foot to foot. “I can handle one day by myself. Are you sure you can handle pretending to be Roger when there’s clearly a lot he’s neglected to tell us?”

“I’ll be fine,” said Brian. “Besides, we’re supposed to be trying to get our bodies back. I’d like to find out what lying about your parents being in Spain has to do with that.” His eyes narrowed in annoyance, which he didn’t feel was entirely unjustified. He was sure Roger had his reasons for lying, and under normal circumstances he had the right to maintain privacy, but Brian couldn’t think of anything that would justify leaving all four of them in the horrible situation they were in. Brian had tried to be as open as possible, and to the best of his knowledge, so had Freddie and Deaky. Why couldn’t Roger do the same? 

Feeling frazzled by the turn of events, Brian grabbed his coat, said goodbye to Deaky, and followed Clare out to her beat-up old car. It was only after they had set off that Brian saw a blurred street sign and realised he’d forgotten to grab his glasses, but he didn’t want to ask Clare to turn around and risk acting even less like her brother than he already was.  
“Thank you, Roger,” Clare said suddenly, completely out of the blue. 

“For what?” Brian asked nervously.

Clare glanced over at him, her expression telling Brian that he should already know what she was thanking him for. “For coming,” she said. “I know you don’t want to, but I wanted to try, and… well, I appreciate it.”

Brian stared at her. Nothing about this was adding up. Roger loved Clare; Brian knew that from the way he talked about her, but she was talking like spending time with her on Christmas Day was some huge favour. Then there was the fact that Roger had lied about his parents being away when he knew the consequences could be severe. Come to think of it - “Where are we going?” Brian asked, before he could overthink the question too much. Roger’s parents lived in Cornwall. By now it would be about ten after eleven; it would take so long to drive out to Cornwall that it would be dark by the time they arrived. 

“Reading,” Clare answered. “They moved there two and a half years ago. You’ve been gone for a while.”

Brian felt his heart sink in his chest, and he wondered if he should have just stayed at home with Deaky. This sounded bad, worse than anything Brian would have expected. It was clear from what Clare had said and the way she said it that Roger’s parents living in Reading for the past two and a half years _wasn’t_ something he was expected to know. 

Brian racked his brains, trying to think of anything Roger had said in all the years he had known him to give him some clue as to what he was getting into, but he couldn’t think of anything. By all the descriptions he had heard, Roger’s family was completely normal, and Roger had gotten along well with them. In fact, Brian was certain he remembered Roger talking about spending Christmas with his family fairly recently, even in the last couple of years.

He looked again at the woman in the driver’s seat. She did indeed look very much like a younger version of Roger, but she hadn’t exactly introduced herself. Maybe Brian had been wrong about her identity after all. He didn’t think so, given her looks and the little context he did have about the situation, but either she was actually someone else or one of Brian’s best friends had been lying to him for years. Brian hoped it was the former.

The woman who was most likely Clare pulled up on the street outside a row of houses with perfectly manicured gardens and turned off the engine. Brian climbed out of the car wordlessly and followed her up a garden path and into one of the houses without knocking. 

“Mum?” she called into the empty hall. “Dad? I’ve brought someone!”

The door at the end of the hall opened almost immediately, and a waft of steam and a pungent smell was released into the hall. A short, thin woman appeared, her dirty blonde hair held back in a bun and a pink frilly apron covering her front. She glanced at Clare, but her eyes slid almost immediately to Brian, where they stayed fixed. “Roger,” she said numbly. “Roger!”

Then she was running down the hall, and Brian nearly had to catch her as she threw herself at him, arms wrapping around his middle until he could hardly breathe. Brian hugged her back, but he had no idea what else he should do. His gut twisted as he thought he felt her sob, but when she leaned back there was a wide smile on her face and her eyes were dry. “I was so worried I’d never see you again,” she said, and she sounded so broken that Brian almost felt tempted to hug this complete stranger again, just to stop her from looking so sad.

He heard footsteps above him, and looked up to see a balding man standing at the top of the staircase. His eyes, naturally larger than usual already, were huge as he stared at Brian, and his hand came out to clutch at the stairway bannister. He looked rather like he needed it for emotional support rather than physical.

He didn’t run to Brian like his wife did, but he descended slowly, almost like he was afraid of Brian. 

When he reached the bottom, Brian noticed they stood at exactly the same height. “It’s good to see you, son.”

_Son_. That just about killed any chance that this could be anyone else’s family but Roger’s. Roger’s father looked like he might cry, and he looked away, not able to look at Brian any longer. “It’s good to see you too,” said Brian.

Roger’s father sucked in a sharp breath at this, and he really looked like he was losing a battle against tears. Brian bit his lip, staring hopelessly at the slow moving train wreck in front of him. He had no idea what to do.

Clare shifted uncomfortably beside Brian. “Er, Roger, why don’t you help Mum with cooking?” she suggested, her voice unnaturally loud in the silent hall.

Brian nodded, latching on to the excuse to move away from this uncomfortable situation. Winifred Taylor, a broad smile on her face, beckoned him down towards the kitchen, and he followed her. The kitchen was chaotic. Knives and bowls lay strewn everywhere, and on the stoves two saucepans were overflowing while a third smoked ominously - Brian could see where Roger had gotten his extremely limited cooking skills. 

Winnie turned down the heat on the stove, not looking at all concerned about the state of Christmas dinner. She kept glancing back at Brian as though she was afraid he would disappear, and there was a big smile on her face. Brian wanted to ask her what had happened, why she hadn’t seen her son in years, but he couldn’t ask while still maintaining the fiction that he was actually Roger. Instead, he smiled at her and picked up a chopping board covered in carrot peel, walking over to the rubbish bin and scraping it out. 

“Thank you,” Winnie said. Brian was under the impression she was thanking him for more than just scraping out the carrot peel. 

They worked together for the next twenty minutes, Brian mostly cleaning up after Winnie and occasionally helping to stir pots that were boiling over again. Winnie seemed frazzled. She kept running from one task to another, only to forget what she was doing again when she looked once more at Brian. Brian could feel her gaze in the back of his skull, and it made him very uncomfortable. It was clear Winnie missed Roger dearly - Brian couldn’t imagine not seeing his son for _years_ \- but Brian wasn’t her son, just a poor copy who wouldn’t be able to have the clearly necessary conversation about their family issues because he had no idea what those family issues even were. 

The phone rang suddenly in the hall, and Winnie left Brian to monitor the saucepan of overcooked pumpkin while she went to answer it. A minute later, her head poked back in. “Roger, love?” she said. “It’s for you. He says he’s a friend of yours.”

Immediately, Brian’s eyes narrowed. It obviously wasn’t really a call for Roger himself, as Roger had never actually been to this house before. That meant it must be from Deaky, who was the only person who knew Brian was here. How had he gotten the number? Deaky, like Brian, had been under the impression the Taylors lived in Cornwall, and “Taylor” was simply too common a surname to look up in the phone books for the whole of England. 

Brian abandoned the still-bubbling pumpkin (he _really_ didn’t have high hopes for the standard of his Christmas meal) and went out into the hall. With the state of the kitchen, Winnie had no choice but to close the door behind her to prevent the steam and smoke from drifting out, and all the other doors were closed too. Brian was alone.

He picked up the receiver and said, “Hello?”

“ _What the hell do you think you’re doing, Brian_?” 

Brian blinked. He’d never heard himself before except for his own singing recorded on high-quality studio equipment, but if he wasn’t mistaken, that was his own voice coming down the tinny speaker. “Roger?” he asked, keeping his voice as quiet as he could. “How did you know I was here?”

“ _Deaky told me you left with my sister_ ,” Roger snapped. He was a volatile person, but Brian had rarely heard him sound so furious. “ _What the hell_?”

“What?” Brian asked, completely bamboozled. Roger’s family was here acting like he’d just returned from the dead, and now Roger was angry at him for responding to Clare’s plea like a normal human being? “Roger, you should have seen her. She asked me to come with her to her parents, and she looked completely desperate! I couldn’t turn her away!” He bit his lip. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I didn’t expect anything like this. You lied to me - to _all_ of us - you told me your parents were in Spain! If you had just said -“

“ _I don’t have to say, Brian_!” Roger cried, now sounding vaguely hysterical. Brian winced, hoping Roger was somewhere private enough that Brian’s own parents weren’t hearing this. 

“Yes, you do,” Brian said roughly. “You _do_ have to say because I walk in here and your parents are crying like their son’s just come back from the dead; Clare says your parents moved here two and a half years ago and you’ve never visited in that time; and I’m about to sit down to Christmas dinner with them. You have to give me something to go on!”

“ _You need to leave_ ,” said Roger. “ _I’m serious, Bri, walk out and go home. I didn’t ask you to do this_!”

“I can’t leave,” Brian retorted. “For one, Clare drove me here, and for two, it would break your mother’s heart. Are you seriously telling me you care so little for your own mother?”

“ _Fuck you, Bri_!” Roger snapped. “ _You have no idea what’s going on_ -“

“Then _tell me_!” Brian hissed. “What did they do that was so horrible that you would refuse to speak to them for years? How many years has it been anyway?”

There was a long pause on the other end, but Brian waited for Roger to answer. When he finally did, his voice was very small, all the fire suddenly gone. “ _Four_.”

“What?” Brian asked, certain he’d misheard.

“ _It’s been four years, Brian, is that what you were so desperate to know_?”

Brian shook his head, his eyes closing in disbelief. “God, Roger,” he said numbly. “What did they do to you?” 

Roger didn’t answer, but Brian could still hear him breathing. An ugly thought suddenly occurred to Brian as he replayed the expressions on Roger’s family’s faces. There was Clare, staring nervously at him as though he was going to explode at her for inviting him; Winnie, who kept glancing at him nervously in the kitchen; and Michael, whom he hadn’t spent much time with but who looked broken by his presence. “Or… or what did you do to them?”

“ _I don’t have to tell you_ ,” said Roger thickly, and Brian had the strong suspicion he was crying. “ _I want you out. Right now_.”

Brian glanced back at the closed door to the kitchen, where there was a loud clattering sound that probably meant poor, frazzled Winnie had dropped a pot. “Roger… I _can’t_ ,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t just leave. They haven’t seen you in _four years_. They’re heartbroken.”

Roger sniffed loudly enough for Brian to hear it down the phone line - he was definitely crying now. Brian’s jaw clenched in sympathy - he _hated_ to hear Roger cry, but he also couldn’t walk out on Roger’s family now and risk ruining the fragile bridges he had started to mend. “If you tell me what happened…” Brian started slowly, “I can help. I can apologise; I don’t mind taking the fall for you… I just want to help you fix this.”

Roger let out a noise that sounded halfway between a scoff and a sob. “ _There’s no fixing this, Brian_ ,” he said. He sighed heavily. “ _Do whatever you want; stay, leave, I don’t care_.”

“No, Roger, you _do_ care - they’re your _family_ for crying out loud -“

“ _I have to go_ ,” said Roger roughly, and the next thing Brian heard was the dialtone.

Brian replaced the receiver with a hand that wouldn’t stop shaking. Throughout the entire conversation, he hadn’t been able to get the looks on Roger’s family’s faces out of his mind, but now in the silence, all he could picture was Roger, upset and alone in a house he hadn’t wanted to be in, and Brian wondered if he had made the right call. 

****

The Christmas meal itself left a lot to be desired, but Winnie had such a huge smile on her face that Brian carefully schooled his features and tried to avoid chewing too much so as not to hurt her feelings. He still knew absolutely nothing about what had happened to drive a wedge between Roger and the rest of his family, and the Taylors seemed to be handling the conflict the tried-and-true English way: pretending nothing had ever happened.

“Would you please pass the salt, Roger?” Clare asked politely, and Roger acquiesced. 

It was normal, and that was setting Brian on edge. Things were _too_ normal. The Taylors had exchanged presents, set the table, and were now halfway through their meal and no one had said anything deeper than comments on the weather. If Roger hadn’t seen them in four years, and he had been _that_ upset about Brian being here now, then there was clearly something that this family badly needed to talk about. Brian wondered again if Roger had been the instigator of whatever issue that had caused their estrangement, and he wondered if the others were expecting _him_ to begin that conversation.

“So, Roger,” said Winnie, who had not yet stopped looking at him like he was about to fade away in front of her, “how is your job?”

Brian blinked, staring at her. The question had sounded as shallow as anything else they had been talking about, but Winnie’s eyes shone, and he thought it looked different to how she had been looking at him all day. This was it - she wasn’t asking him how his work was going. She was asking what he had been up to the past four years. “Um, good,” he said. “Very good actually. Freddie and I are still running the stall but it’s more of a secondary thing. We’re on track to release a new record soon, and we think it’s going to go quite -“

“You’re what?” 

Brian stopped, looking up at Michael, who had interrupted him. The man’s large eyes were narrowed almost into slits as he glared at Brian, and out of the corner of his eyes, Brian noticed Winnie and Clare’s shoulders stiffen. Brian quickly closed his mouth - it was clear he had misspoken somehow. 

Keeping quiet turned out to be another error, because Michael was suddenly leaning forward, his fist clenched on the tabletop. “Are you telling us that while you left us in hell, you were off playing _third rate rock star_?” The final part of the question was shouted, and the words left an ugly ringing sensation in Brian’s ears that wasn’t entirely due to the volume. Brian tensed, his hands gripping the seat of his chair like he was afraid gravity would fail and he would just go floating upwards.

Winnie was staring at the table, while Clare, eyes wide in sympathy, was staring right at Brian. Brian resolutely avoided her gaze. 

“Is that why you look like _that_?” Michael continued, hand gesticulating wildly towards Brian’s head.

“It’s alright, Michael,” Winnie said, so softly she could have been a mouse. 

“It’s _not_ alright; he looks ridiculous!” cried Michael, but he was mercifully sinking back into his seat rather than getting further into Brian’s face. “Why don’t you cut your hair? I already have one daughter; I don’t need _two_.”

Brian looked sharply up at Roger’s father again, but the man had already turned his attention back to his meal. It was probably for the best that he wasn’t meeting Brian’s eyes right then, because Brian wanted to deck him. Logically, he knew he was likely just hurting and lashing out, but the petty jab about Roger’s looks from the man’s own father made Brian furious. 

But despite their recent problems, Brian loved Roger, and he didn’t want to make this worse for him, so instead of escalating the situation, Brian instead picked up his fork and stabbed the pile of soggy pumpkin with more force than was necessary, resolutely ignoring Clare’s unflinching gaze.

Tension hung over the table for the rest of the meal, which was eaten in silence. Michael was clearly still fuming, glaring at his plate as though it had done something to offend him, and Brian’s mind worked overtime, trying to once again figure out what the hell had happened here. What fight would be so bad as to stop you speaking to your family for four years? Brian couldn’t imagine such a thing. He had had fights with his parents, terrible ones, but they always made up and apologised to one another afterwards. Brian didn’t think he’d ever gone more than six hours giving his parents the silent treatment.

He certainly wasn’t going to ask though; the wound was plainly still raw. Instead, when everyone was finished, Brian stood first, collecting all the plates wordlessly and carrying them into the kitchen. It was too risky to engage the Taylors in conversation about their issues when Brian didn’t know what was going on, but he could try and show he loved them volunteering to do the frankly monstrous task of washing the Christmas dishes. 

Brian had just gotten the water from the tap to run at the desired temperature when Winnie came back into the kitchen, picking up a tea towel and joining Brian at the sink. “Thank you, love,” she said softly.

Brian smiled at her.

They waited in silence for the sink to fill, but Brian could feel that Winnie wanted to say something more. Finally, when the sink was full enough for Brian to grab one of the dirty glasses and begin to scrub it, she started speaking. “Your father didn’t mean what he said,” she said softly. “He was just upset.”

Brian nodded. “I know.” He did know, but he was still a little angry at the way Michael had chosen to express himself.

The kitchen door opened again, and Brian looked over his shoulder to see Clare enter. She found another tea towel in a drawer, and joined her mother in drying. “So, Roger, really, how have things been?”

Brian couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but the atmosphere felt very different when Clare asked him that question. It wasn’t so tense anymore. “Um, good,” he said. “I live with a friend of mine, Freddie -“

“He’s the friend who you run a market stall with?” Clare interrupted. 

Brian glanced up at her. “Yeah,” he said. He finished cleaning a wine glass and set it on the draining rack. Clare picked it up and began drying it with her towel.

“You must get along very well,” said Winnie.

Brian nodded. His shoulders relaxed; this conversation was going much better than the last one. “Yeah, we do,” he said. “He’s also the singer in our band.”

The door to the kitchen opened again, and Brian looked over to see Michael walk in. His shoulders were slumped and his face was set in a frown - he looked guilty over his outburst. Michael didn’t say anything, just stood in the background with his hands in his pockets, looking ashamed.

Brian chose to ignore him.

He washed the dishes in silence for a little while, Winnie and Clare drying and Michael staring at him. Several times, Michael drew in a sharp breath as though he was about to start speaking, but thought better of it and closed his mouth.

Eventually, he did say something. “I’m surprised you’re still working at a market stall,” he said slowly, carefully, as though he was trying very hard to be diplomatic. “How are your studies going?”

Brian glanced over his shoulder at Michael briefly, trying to get a read on him. He was staring very hard at Brian, and there was a hint of worry on his face, like he was afraid of how his question was going to come across. He struck Brian as someone who was exceptionally bad at interpersonal interaction. 

“Uh, yeah, good,” Brian said cautiously. “I should be about to graduate at the end of the next semester.”

“Right,” Michael murmured softly, almost to himself. “But a dentistry degree takes five years, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t you be finished by now?”

Once again, Clare and Winnie tensed next to Brian, but they didn’t say anything, just kept drying the dishes that had built up on the rack. Nervously, feeling like he was walking into a trap, Brian swallowed and answered, trying to keep his voice as casual as possible. “I switched from dentistry,” he explained. “I’m about to finish a biology degree.”

“Biology?” Michael repeated quietly. 

Brian stopped scrubbing the plate that was in the sink, letting it and the dishcloth fall to the bottom of the water as he slowly turned around. “Yeah,” he said. “I prefer biology.”

Michael glanced down, and Brian could see his fist clench in his pocket. “And what job do you expect to get with that?”

Brian’s eyes narrowed. He really wanted to help fix this, but Michael’s confrontational attitude wasn’t making it particularly easy. “There are a lot of options,” he said. “Besides, I’ve been managing just fine already.”

“Fine?” Michael repeated, his voice raising. “You have a market stall and you’re _in a band_! Have you ever even _had_ a real job?”

Brian leaned back against the sink, his arms folding over his chest. He was becoming more and more pissed off. His face felt hot, and his heart was pounding in his chest. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes narrowed. Beside him, Clare and Winnie had grown still.

Once again, Brian’s silence only proved to make Michael angrier, and the man’s hands came out of his pockets, fists clenched at his side. Teeth bared, he stalked over, standing so close to Brian that Brian had to lean back, the edge of the sink digging painfully into his lower back. For the first time, staring into the older man’s red face, Brian began to feel frightened. 

“Well?” Michael snapped, and Brian winced at the volume.

“I don’t know what you want me to say!” Brian cried. “I’m doing fine, I’m managing my own life -“

He was cut off when Michael leaned over behind him and grabbed an unwashed glass, hurling it over at the far wall. Brian, Clare and Winnie all winced when it shattered. 

“I worked _so hard_ for you to get a decent education and a good career, and this is how you repay that kindness?” 

Brian shook his head in disbelief. “Are you _joking_?” he cried. “He’s - I’m about to graduate from university; I’m running my own business and I have a record deal! What more could you _possibly_ ask for?”

Suddenly, Brian’s head snapped back and the left side of his face erupted in pain. Slowly, his hand came up to touch his cheek as it sunk in - Roger’s father had punched him. 

Brian looked back up at Michael. He felt frozen, paralysed by shock, and then the older man was taking advantage of his shock, his hand reaching up to grab Brian’s hair, and suddenly Brian was being pushed over away from the sink and towards the corner of the room, away from Clare and Winnie. Michael stared after him when he stumbled, standing between Brian and the two women.

“Get out!” Michael shouted, pointing at the door.

Brian’s hand knotted in his hair. His scalp was smarting after being tugged at so violently, and he rubbed it, trying to stop from shaking. He was breathing heavily, his eye hurting from being hit and his face burning. His gaze drifted over to Clare and Winnie. Clare’s hands were covering her nose and mouth as wide eyes took in the scene in front of her. Winnie was looking at the ground.

Abruptly, Brian smoothed down where his shirt had ridden up when he had been thrown. “With pleasure,” he said roughly, and he turned and walked out of the kitchen, down the hall, and then out of the Taylors’ house. 

He sniffed as he walked quickly down the street, putting as much distance as he could between himself and that house, his shoes crunching on the icy snow. How could Brian have been so stupid? No one would refuse to talk to their family for four years because they had had a simple disagreement. Roger had sounded so upset on the phone, and Brian had just dismissed all his concerns like they were teenage angst.

By the time he realised he had forgotten his coat, and with it his wallet, Brian had reached a small, abandoned park. It left him in a tricky position; he had no money, no way to get home, and it was very cold. All the same, Brian couldn’t go back, so he sat down on a bench to think.

His scalp was still hurting, his eye even more so, but neither occupied his mind at that moment, because he couldn’t stop thinking about Roger. Their conversation on the phone was replaying over in his head on a loop, and tears of shame pricked Brian’s eyes at how he had tried to force the truth out of Roger, even insinuated that the bust up between the family had been Roger’s fault. Part of Brian tried to justify his behaviour to himself, but the bigger part knew better. Just this morning, Roger had been in a panic over going to spend Christmas at Brian’s, and Brian had treated him like he had been overreacting. 

“ _Jesus, Brian_ ,” Roger had said, “ _do you know what happens at family Christmases_?”

Brian’s hands came up to cover his face in shame, even though he was the only person in the park.

He didn’t know how long he sat there like that, but suddenly he heard the crunch of footsteps in the snow beside him, and someone sat down on the bench to his left. He looked up, wiping at his eyes, and saw Clare looking at him. In her arms, she had his coat, and he took it from her, putting it on gratefully.

“I’m really sorry,” she whispered. 

Brian shook his head, looking back at the ground. “Not your fault,” he said roughly. His throat constricted suddenly, his breathing hitching in a stifled sob.

Clare reached into the pocket of her coat and withdrew a pack of cigarettes. Brian hadn’t smoked since that night with Deaky outside the club, but he took one when she held it out, holding still when she held up a lighter. When the cigarette was lit, Brian sucked in the smoke and took a deep breath, and it did help steady his nerves a little. 

They smoked together in the cold silence. When Brian’s cigarette was finished and extinguished on the ground next to his shoe, Brian glanced back up at Clare. He didn’t really know too much about her, only that she was younger than Roger and that he spoke about her fondly. She did look very young, her cheeks still chubby from childhood, and fear suddenly overcame Brian at the idea that she was still living in that house. He wasn’t sure he could ask her - what if she was seventeen, and it should have been obvious she was still living with her parents?

“Er, Clare?” Brian said carefully. “What time were you thinking about going?” It was about the best he could come up with, and he hoped he would get an answer from her as to her living situation.

Clare shrugged. “I had been wanting to stay longer,” she said. “But it’s okay; we can go. My flatmate’s out; we can go back to my place if you want.”

Brian breathed a sigh of relief at that, not bothering to disguise the emotion.

“I really am sorry, Roger,” she continued. “Mum’s been devastated, and Dad… he was so sorry. He really was. They’ve been talking about you a lot. I thought he wanted to change - I didn’t think it would go like that at all -“ She cut herself off, leaning down and covering her face in her hands. She was crying. 

Brian put his arm around her shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said softly. “You just… you just wanted your family to be close.”

Clare nodded, still hiding her face and her shoulders hitching. 

Brian rubbed her shoulder, but otherwise just let her cry it out. 

Brian had been lonely as a child. He hadn’t had many friends at school, too geeky and too interested in space to be popular, and then he had gone home to his parents, who loved him but who weren’t substitutes for peers. He had badly wanted a sibling, even asked his mother for a little brother for his sixth birthday. Comforting Clare brought back those old feelings, and he wondered if Roger ever did this for her. 

Eventually, Clare sat up, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her coat. “Let’s get out of here,” she suggested. “I have board games at my flat. Let’s have a proper Christmas; just you and me.”

Brian found himself nodding, a small smile creeping over his face. “Yeah,” he said. “That sounds good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof. I actually upset myself writing that. I wanted to explore a particular thing about Roger I'd noticed a long time ago that reminded me very much of how I used to act before I came to terms with my own experience of domestic violence. I didn't actually find out until this story was already well under way and this chapter planned out that he actually is a survivor of domestic violence. I do want to reiterate that we don't know who was the perpetrator though, and his family (and him, and everyone else in this) is completely fictitious. 
> 
> Anyway, I would dearly love to hear your thoughts in the comments! I really can't emphasise enough how motivating I find your comments and how appreciated they are. Thank you so much for sticking with this story for so long <3
> 
> Update: I've written about this chapter and essentially my own history and reasons for including this. It's a little long and self indulgent but if you're interested it's on my Tumblr [here](https://reinne.me/post/184979667597/so-yeah-that-chapter-of-right-til-the-end).


	12. John's Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John spends his first Christmas alone, but it's not as bad as he expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god finally. I am so, so sorry this took so long. I've had a shocking month. A couple of weeks ago I posted a comprehensive list of excuses on my tumblr about work and my health and family visiting... After I posted that even more started going wrong, including an unexpected extra visit from my father, which if you read my tumblr or even this fic you know is its own massive thing, a likely event of cyberstalking (I'll say more in end notes) and my grandmother was diagnosed with a form of cancer that is genetic, so now I'm worried about not only her but also my mother and myself. It's been rough.
> 
> I can't say enough how much I appreciate the kind words some of you have sent me over this difficult time. I've been feeling so guilty for not getting this out sooner and you guys have just been so supportive. I'm so, so grateful, I really am, I wish I could do more to express that gratitude. I hope you enjoy this chapter, at least!

John was certain, right from the moment he woke too early and too cold, that this wasn’t going to be a good Christmas. 

Christmas had always been something special to John. When he was little, his parents had encouraged his belief in Santa, and he remembered sitting up in his bed on Christmas Eve, trying desperately not to let his eyes close in case he missed glimpsing the sleigh. When he had gotten too old to believe in Santa himself, he would write notes from Santa to Julie, so she could have the same experience. His family was quiet, and he often wished they were closer, but on Christmas, it was like the one day of the year he truly felt part of the group. He truly felt loved.

He wouldn’t admit it to the others, of course. He already felt like a bit of an outsider, being both the newest and the youngest, and it would simply be too embarrassing. He could already hear Roger laughing at him, see Brian’s frown as he tried to work out why Deaky put so much childish faith into one silly festival, hear Freddie questioning him. He had had more than enough of it even before Freddie and Roger had sat down on the couch, looking like they wanted nothing more than to drop suddenly dead.

John tried to remind himself that their situation was complicated, and that he himself would prefer not to have to stumble his way through an awkward Bulsara family luncheon, but he couldn’t help feeling a hint of jealousy, especially towards Freddie. Freddie had been anxious for days, asking John all manner of invasive questions about his family and about Christmas, and it just reminded John that he would not get to be a part of it this year, that he would be stuck in this flat that wasn’t his with Brian. John loved Brian, but he really wasn’t his first choice of Christmas companion. 

All the same, while Brian was trying to distract Roger (who seemed to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed even worse than usual), John fetched the bag of tinsel and baubles he’d picked up at a thrift store and set about making the best of a bad situation. 

He preheated the oven and began to prepare his mother’s roast potatoes as best he could. Roger left for Brian’s house, looking miserable, and Brian came over to help John with the potatoes. Brian seemed to be in one of his pensive moods, staring intently at the potatoes as he worked as though they held the key to existence. John hadn’t quite figured out how to deal with these moods of Brian’s, so he said nothing. Even so, it was a companionable silence, and if John closed his eyes he could almost pretend it was his mother standing next to him, helping him peel potatoes. 

Then there was a knock at the door. 

The girl was young, younger probably than John, and with the strong resemblance it hadn’t taken John too long to realise it was Roger’s sister. Judging by the blank look on Brian’s face for a good portion of the conversation, it took him comparatively longer, but eventually his eyes lit up as he worked it out. 

Clare wanted Roger home for Christmas. 

Brian took Deaky aside, leaving Clare standing awkwardly on the threshold, looking out of place and uncomfortable. Brian didn’t know any more than John about why she was here, and why Roger had apparently lied about what his parents were doing for Christmas. 

“Would it be okay with you if I went?” Brian asked, his forehead furrowed in concern. His eyes kept darting back and forth between John and Clare. “I’m sorry; I know you wanted to spend today together… she just seems really upset.”

She did seem upset. Her hands had been trembling with anxiety. John’s own sister got anxious sometimes, but she had never been afraid of him. 

John was an adult, and Christmas was a time for family. John wasn’t going to deny Clare her family - or, as close to her family as she could get, given the circumstances. 

He let Brian go, and just like that, John was alone on Christmas Day for the first time ever. 

The flat was almost oppressively silent after Brian shut the door behind him. Even the traffic noise had died down, people choosing to spend the day with their families rather than commuting to work or school or to the shops. John stood alone in the centre of the living room, his hands by his sides, his ears seeming to prickle as they tried to pick up on sounds, but there were none. He was alone.

It wasn’t like Deaky wasn’t used to being alone. He had been living alone for a fair while now, and he enjoyed returning to the quiet solitude after a busy day with university or anything to do with Queen. Given that it was Christmas, though…

Deaky pushed the thought to the back of his mind. He wasn’t a child. This wasn’t exactly how he would have chosen to spend Christmas, but it was the hand he had been dealt, and he was just going to have to make the best of it.

He went back over towards the kitchen and put the potatoes into the oven. Then, there was nothing to do but wait, so Deaky wandered into Roger’s room to find the guitar Roger had been playing with before he had left for Brian’s parents. 

He hadn’t shared it yet with the others, but he had been close to finishing a song for a few weeks now. At first he had wanted to share it, wanted to hear the others’ opinions and suggestions. He had wanted Freddie to look at him with pride, the way he had looked at Roger when Roger had pitched his first song.

But it never seemed the right time for John. The band seemed to always be involved in something more important, never pausing to see if John had anything to say. John had difficulty interjecting himself in the face of three strong personalities. It had been easier in the beginning, when Roger or Freddie were putting more effort into helping John make himself heard, but once the fighting really started to get out of control, John was left by the wayside.

It had been the reason he had considered leaving. He had felt voiceless. 

Voiceless. John wasn’t voiceless anymore. Freddie had encouraged him to sing even though Freddie missed his own voice. Freddie had told him he had something to say that didn’t just come from his borrowed vocal cords. Freddie believed in John. 

Maybe a finished new song would make a perfect Christmas gift for Freddie.

****

John played with the cheap acoustic guitar and sang to himself until the timer for the oven ran out. By now, he was feeling quite confident with his song; it had been almost finished for a while, but the opportunity to have Freddie’s voice to play with by himself had helped him figure out the final touches. Perhaps in the future he would be more like Brian, asking for feedback through every step of the way. For his first go around, he felt much more comfortable having a complete work of which he was proud to show Freddie. 

He laid the guitar across the sofa and went to fetch the potatoes. The oil and fat was sizzling in the pan as he took it out from the oven and set it out on the stove, and the potatoes themselves were golden and smelled perfect. There were far too many for just him - there were probably even too many had it been both himself and Brian - but his mother’s potatoes were probably his favourite thing about Christmas, so he had wanted to be able to eat them until he felt like puking. 

He served them up on a plate and returned to the couch. The flat was now silent, the guitar that had been the only noise lying still next to him. John certainly had enough potatoes now. 

He stuck his fork into one. The inside was white and fluffy, and when he put it in his mouth, the burst of flavour was so strong it nearly brought tears to his eyes.

The potatoes were delicious, but the silence of the flat weighed down on him like a heavy blanket, the Christmas decorations he had hung in an attempt to be festive glaring down at him as though in judgment. 

He had planned to eat and eat until he couldn’t anymore, but by the time he was onto his third potato, they had lost their appeal, the crispy outside and soft white inside tasting suddenly dusty on his tongue. Instead of finishing the meal as he had planned, he returned to the kitchen and put the leftovers in the fridge. He wasn’t a fan of roast potatoes after they had been refrigerated, but he might be able to turn them into a shepherd’s pie. 

Suddenly, a shrill ringing interrupted him, and he jumped, his heart pounding. He had been so shocked by the sudden noise from the telephone that when he reached out to lift the receiver to his ear, his hand was shaking slightly. He ignored it, taking a deep breath to try and calm down. “Hello?” he asked into the telephone.

“ _Deaky, is that you_?” a voice that sounded very much like Brian’s asked.

“Yeah,” John responded. “Roger?”

“ _Yeah, it’s me_ ,” Roger answered. “ _Brian’s dad wants to know whether I plan on working in public service or academia and I have no idea what to tell him. Can you put Brian on the phone_?”

“Uh, no,” responded John. “Brian’s gone, actually. Your sister showed up and said she wanted you to come home for Christmas, so Brian went.”

There was such a long silence in response to this that Deaky frowned, wondering if the line was disconnected. Just as he was about to ask Roger if he was still there, Roger spoke up. “ _He what_?” 

“Clare took him to spend Christmas with your parents,” John repeated, eyes narrowing. “How come you told us your parents were in Spain?”

There was another long silence. “ _I have to go_ ,” said Roger hastily, then the line went dead.

John’s frown deepened as his curiosity about Roger’s lies grew. Judging from that phone call, it wasn’t a simple case of miscommunication.

He couldn’t bring himself to think too hard on the matter, though, because now that the phone had been hung up again, the silence was once again bearing down, and John felt impossibly lonely. The idea of sitting here in the flat for another minute had suddenly become unacceptable, so John went over to his pile of clothes in the corner, pulled on his coat and his shoes, grabbed the keys and headed out the door.

If he had thought it had been cold inside, it was quite another thing outdoors, and John wrapped his coat as tightly around himself as he could. His breath formed a cloud in front of him, and he found himself trudging through puddles and slush, the sun having melted some of the more exposed deposits of snow on the ground. He didn’t know where he was going - he just walked, aiming to set his pace fast enough that he would hopefully warm up some. 

The roads were empty of traffic or pedestrians, but the sun shone down through a layer of white cloud, and John didn’t feel as alone as he had in the vacant flat. 

He had been walking just over half an hour when the silence was interrupted by a peal of childish laughter. He stopped, listening, and now he had paused, he could definitely hear voices. Since he was curious, and had no other destination in mind, John turned down a side street and followed the direction of the voices.

The voices seemed to be coming from a park. John could think of many places he would rather spend Christmas than a public park covered in snow, but with no other plans on Christmas, he supposed he would head through the park and find out what kind of people spent Christmas Day in the snow.

The park was covered in more snow than the streets had been, the natural earth absorbing less heat from the sun than the bitumen and concrete from the roads. The trees were leafless, but somehow still looked inviting with their branches reaching up into the sky. There was some play equipment on which two children were climbing, shrieking and giggling as only children could. A picnic table by the play equipment was covered in bags and baskets, and a small group of adults sat there, glancing occasionally up at the children.

There were a few other benches dotted around, and John spotted two other people who were alone. One was sitting close by, while another was far off, visible only by the yellow coat standing out against the backdrop of white and brown. 

Not really knowing what else to do, John chose a bench not too far away and sat down.

Even though he was still alone, it was more bearable with the sound of the gentle breeze and the screams of children in the air. John dug his hands into his coat pockets, trying to keep them warm. He’d stay out here as long as he could manage before heading back to the empty flat.

Just when the cold was becoming a little too much to manage, he heard footsteps crunching towards him, and looked up. It appeared to be one of the women who had been sitting by the picnic table. She was older, probably in her late fifties, with dark skin, a thick coat that went down to her knees and a green scarf wrapped over her hair. She was smiling. 

“Hello,” she said in greeting. She had some sort of accent John couldn’t place, but he smiled back at her nervously. “I am Sheerin. May I interrupt you?”

“Er, sure,” said John. “My name’s John.” Almost as soon as he had said it, he winced, realising he should have introduced himself as Freddie. 

She didn’t reach out to shake his hand, but her smile grew and she nodded her head deeply. “I see you are alone,” she said. “Would you like to come and have a meal with my family?” 

She gestured over towards the picnic table. When John looked, he saw the four adults whom he had seen when he walked into the park. 

“Oh, um, alright then,” John said, surprise creeping into his voice. “Thank you.”

Sheerin smiled more broadly, turning and leading John over to the picnic table. When they got closer, John could see that the family had used insulating bags and a lot of aluminium foil to keep the food warm. John cast his eyes over. He guessed there was too much food there for the number of people. 

John was introduced to the rest of his sudden new dining mates. There was Patman, Sheerin’s husband who could not speak English; Mina, their daughter and mother to the two children on the play equipment; and Basoor, Mina’s husband.

“Where are you from, John?” Mina asked. “You don’t look like you’re from around here.”

John blinked, surprised at the bluntness. He felt heat rise in his face. It was easy to forget that he suddenly didn’t look like he exactly belonged in London. He tried not to feel nervous about the implication; after all, Mina herself, with her dark skin and hair covered in a dark blue scarf like her mother’s, did not look like she belonged in London either, so she couldn’t possibly be upset by his presence. “Um, I’m from Leicester, actually,” he said, deciding to stick to the truth.

“But your family…” Mina continued, clearly fishing for something.

“Uh…” John said awkwardly, trying to remember what exactly Freddie’s background was. He had definitely heard it before, but he’d never really paid too much attention. His gut churned as he was suddenly confronted not only with Mina’s expectant gaze, but also with the knowledge that he didn’t know as much about Freddie as he really should. 

“It doesn’t matter where his family is from,” said Basoor, Mina’s husband. His own accent, like John’s, was English, and it sounded as though he was from the London area.

“You’re right; it doesn’t,” said Sheerin. She put a plate in front of John. He didn’t recognise the specific dish, but it appeared to be predominantly rice, dark coloured from some kind of sauce or spice and with meat he guessed to be lamb. “Our family is Pashtun. We moved here from Pakistan when our children were young.”

“Oh,” said John, accepting the fork and dipping it into the rice. Suddenly, he remembered something. “I’m allergic to dairy.”

“Don’t worry!” said Sheerin. “I cooked the food; it does not have any dairy.”

John nodded, accepting the explanation, and brought the fork to his mouth. The rice was bursting with flavour. It was somehow sweet, which John hadn’t expected, and though it wasn’t piping hot like it had just come off the stove, it was perfectly warm enough. “Thank you,” he said, realising he hadn’t said it when she had handed him the plate. “It’s delicious.”

She smiled at him, but she didn’t answer directly. Mina was calling her children from the play equipment to come and eat. John continued to eat, quicker than he usually would have in an effort to avoid the food growing cold. 

Sheerin’s husband Patman said something to Sheerin that John didn’t understand, and she responded in kind. The language didn’t sound like anything John had heard before, and he didn’t really know how to describe it. 

“So, John,” Mina began, once the conversation with her parents had died down. Her children, a boy and a girl, had wedged themselves either side of her on the picnic bench and were now quiet as they shovelled food into their mouths. “What brought you down to the park today?”

John looked away from her, down at the wooden table. “I was just out for a walk, I suppose,” he said awkwardly. It was somehow a little embarrassing admitting that he didn’t have anyone to spend Christmas with, and he hoped they wouldn’t bring it up. 

“You’re not spending the day with family?” Mina prodded.

John couldn’t help it - his face heated up, and he stared resolutely into the wood of the picnic table. His ears were buzzing, and he was suddenly deathly afraid that he might cry. “My parents are away,” he said, saying the first thing that came to his mind. “They like to go where it’s warmer.” It was the same thing Roger had told him about his own parents just a few days ago. 

Mina made a humming noise, taking another bite of her meal. Beside her, her young daughter spilled a forkful of rice down her front, and Basoor turned to help her clean up.

“I’m not sure what your family observes, but our family is Muslim,” Sheerin explained, looking at John. He looked up from the table to meet her gaze; she somehow seemed less intimidating than her daughter. “We don’t celebrate Christmas Day quite like our neighbours. Every year I cook, and we come here. We invite anyone who might want a home-cooked meal with a family to eat with us.”

“Oh,” said John, not knowing what else to say. He felt his face growing hotter at the idea of himself looking like some pathetic misfit, all alone in the park on Christmas Day. He tried to quash his embarrassment, reminding himself that she did this every year and he logically couldn’t be the most pathetic person she had seen, but it was sometimes difficult to stamp down on many years of feeling uncomfortable in the spotlight. In an attempt to move the focus of the conversation away from himself and back to Sheerin, he asked, “Why?”

“Christmas can be hard for English people,” she said simply. “Some people don’t get along with family; some don’t have a family; and some only have family who live far away.” She sighed, placing her elbows on the picnic table and leaning her chin on her crossed fingers. “I have family who live far away,” she said, her voice a little halting, as though she was having trouble choosing the words she wanted. “I do not speak to my sister often. The phone is too expensive. Every Eid I miss her.”

John didn’t know what Eid was, and he didn’t ask, preferring to remain silent. Sheerin’s eyes had glazed over slightly, as though she was lost in a memory. Mina’s son tugged at his mother’s sleeve and leaned up to whisper something in her ear. 

Sheerin blinked, the faraway look in her gaze softening, and she smiled. “English people are very good at making things,” she said, “but they are sometimes very bad at talking with their neighbours.”

The corner of John’s mouth quirked, and he brought another forkful of rice and lamb to his mouth. 

****

John spent the best part of an hour with Sheerin and her family, listening to them talk and eating the rest of his unconventional Christmas dinner. He didn’t say much, preferring to just listen and enjoy the fact that he had company, even if it wasn’t the company he would have chosen himself. When the cold finally began to sink in, he said his goodbyes and began to head back to the flat, feeling considerably better about himself. 

When he returned to the flat, still warm as he had left the heater going, the silence was not as oppressive as it had been when he had left, and he picked the abandoned guitar up from the sofa and began to practice his song.

Sitting there alone on the sofa with his guitar, Deaky felt content in his solitude for the first time since he had lost his body. 

He played for the best part of an hour. The sun had started to go down when he heard the door to the flat open behind him, and he stopped strumming, turning around to see Freddie walking in.

Freddie usually had a manner of walking that was very different to Deaky. His spine was usually straight, which gave him an air of confidence that was almost the opposite of Deaky’s trademark slouch. It wouldn’t be enough to identify that the man in John Deacon’s body was not John Deacon, but he had been walking around with a very un-Deaky-like air to him. Now, though, his shoulders were hunched slightly, and the smile he offered John when he saw him was weak. 

John stood up, leaning the guitar against the armchair as Freddie shut the door. “Hello,” he said to Freddie. “How did it go?”

Freddie looked up at John, but he only met his gaze for a second before they darted back down again, Freddie’s hand coming to tug some of his long brown hair behind an ear. “Oh, you know…” he murmured, trying to sound casual and failing.

Deaky frowned. “Did it go okay?” he asked again. “How’s Mum?”

His anxiety must have come through in his voice, because suddenly Freddie was looking right at him. “She’s fine, I suppose,” he said. “I just didn’t expect your grandfather to be… well…” Freddie frowned.

“Oh,” said Deaky, breaking Freddie’s gaze. “It’s okay.” 

Deaky didn’t like to talk about his grandfather too much. 

Freddie must have sensed his reticence, because he quickly changed the subject. “How was your day, dear?” he asked, reaching out to place a hand on John’s shoulder. “Where’s Brian?”

“Brian’s gone,” Deaky explained, shrugging. “Roger’s sister showed up and said she wanted him to come home to his parents for Christmas, so he went.”

Freddie frowned, his grip tightening ever so slightly on John’s shoulder. “Roger’s sister?” he repeated. “I thought his parents were in Spain.”

Freddie was Roger’s best friend, and part of Deaky was surprised that Freddie, too, hadn’t known Roger was lying. John shrugged again, and this time Freddie’s hand fell from his shoulder. 

John’s shoulder tingled in the place Freddie had been touching it. 

“I guess he didn’t want Brian to visit his parents,” Deaky said softly. 

“But you didn’t answer my question,” Freddie said, the energy suddenly returning to his voice. “How was your day? I hope it wasn’t too horrible being stuck here on your own.”

“Well, I wasn’t stuck here,” said Deaky. “Not really.”

Suddenly, he found himself telling Freddie everything, right from the beginning. He recounted how he had felt when Brian had left, how he had tried to make his mother’s potatoes but they hadn’t tasted right when he wasn’t surrounded by his family. He told Freddie about the park, and about meeting Sheerin and her family, and the strange yet delicious food he had eaten, that had somehow tasted more homey than his mother’s potatoes because he had had someone to eat with on Christmas Day. At some point during the conversation, the two moved to the sofa, sitting next to each other but turned so they were facing. 

“And then I came home, and, well… here we are,” he finished, rather lamely. 

He glanced up at Freddie. Freddie was smiling, a sparkle in his eyes that John hadn’t seen for a while. Deaky usually felt embarrassed when he spoke for that long, but with Freddie, it was easy. With Freddie, it felt natural. 

“Freddie, where are you from?” he asked suddenly. 

Freddie, who had been leaning further and further forward as Deaky’s story progressed, listening with keen interest and a smile, suddenly drew back, the smile fading.

“I don’t mean -“ Deaky said, his voice faltering. “I don’t mean anything bad, but I like you, you’re my friend, and I feel like I don’t know much about you! I know you were born in Zanzibar, and I know you lived in India for a little while, but I’d really like to get to know you…” John trailed off, suddenly feeling like he might have said something wrong. He’d felt uncomfortable in the park when Mina had said he didn’t look like he was from England. He had never thought of Freddie as any kind of outsider, but today had brought home the fact that he knew less about his friend than he would have liked.

“It’s okay,” Freddie said softly. “I’m sorry I reacted that way. Sometimes when people ask that… they don’t ask with the best intentions.”

Deaky nodded, biting his lip. 

“Well… I was born in Zanzibar, as you know,” Freddie began. His voice was still soft, like he was unused to sharing like this. “I wasn’t always Freddie, either. My parents named me Farrokh.”

“Farrokh?” John repeated.

Freddie nodded. “I don’t go by that anymore,” he said unnecessarily. John knew, of course, that Freddie’s name was Freddie. Freddie’s personal history, on the other hand, was something he’d never been privy to, except for the most rudimentary of facts. John brought his legs up onto the sofa, wrapping his arms around them as he listened to Freddie speak. 

Freddie spoke haltingly at first, talking about his early years in Zanzibar and his parents. He told John about moving to India as a child, living with his aunt and his grandmother, who taught him to play the piano. As he began to speak about moving to boarding school, his voice picked up, as though he had gained confidence from not being interrupted. He smiled as he told John about the pranks he used to play on his teachers, and the friends he had made, now left behind in India. John tensed when Freddie described how it had felt when he had moved back in with his parents only to find they were not welcome in the community any longer; how frightening it had been to hear rocks thrown on the roof at night and hear insults shouted during the day. He explained about his Parsi background and his parents’ beliefs, and how Freddie’s own experiences in life had made him doubt his old faith. 

When Freddie finally trailed off, he leaned back against the sofa cushions as though he was exhausted. The flat was by now engulfed in darkness, though John could still see Freddie by the glow of the street lamp outside. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone my complete life story before,” Freddie said, a hint of amusement in his voice. 

John felt as though he had a million questions, ranging from asking about the school system in India to the weather in Zanzibar to how Freddie had felt spending so little time with his parents as a child. Right at that moment, though, he didn’t feel the need to ask any. Freddie opening up had been the best Christmas gift John could have gotten, because now he no longer felt like he was on the outside looking in. He felt like he had been allowed to see something special.

John observed Freddie’s dimly illuminated form. In the poor light, he could almost pretend he was looking at Freddie as he should have been, and not Freddie in John’s body. John wished he had a camera, because he couldn’t imagine a sight he had ever wanted to recall more. “Thank you,” he said softly.

He thought he saw Freddie smile. 

Suddenly, John had another idea. Before he could think too hard about it and scare himself off, he jumped up and grabbed the guitar, sitting back down on the sofa next to Freddie and laying the guitar over his lap. “I thought I’d show you something I wrote,” he explained, feeling only slightly insecure. “If that’s okay, I mean.”

Freddie sat upright, leaning forward. His posture brought his face into the dim beam cast by the street lamp, and his eyes were shining. “You wrote a song?” he asked.

John nodded, looking down and staring at the neck of the guitar as though he needed to see where to place his fingers. 

“Darling, that’s wonderful!” Freddie cried. “I would love to hear it. What are you calling it?”

“Misfire,” John answered. “I’ve been working on it for a while.” Freddie didn’t say anything more, only nodded, so John put his fingers on the strings and began to strum the guitar for the third time that day. 

He tried very hard not to pay too much attention to Freddie, worried it might put him off playing well, but he was difficult to ignore when he began leaning further and further forward. About half way through the song, Freddie reached out and placed a hand on John’s knee, but John somehow managed to play through the entire song without faltering. When he finished, he stayed stock still, awaiting judgment from the man he respected as a musician more than any other. 

“Darling, that was amazing!” Freddie cried, leaning even further forward, the pressure increasing on John’s knee. 

“You liked it?” John asked, hating how insecure he sounded.

“I _loved_ it!” Freddie cried. “You came up with that by yourself?”

John nodded. “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “You and Brian write loads of songs.”

Freddie shook his head. “Brian and I write songs half way and then ask for suggestions,” he said. “You came up with that from start to finish all by yourself. You should be very proud.”

Deaky bit his lip, almost in an effort to control himself, but he couldn’t help smiling broadly at the praise. He respected Freddie so much as a musician, and loved him so much as a friend, and it had been frightening to expose himself and play his song. Now, he was so glad he had done it. 

Freddie leaned forward slightly. Deaky’s heart pounded against the wall of his chest, and the guitar made an untuned twang as his hands fell suddenly from the strings. Freddie’s hand came up suddenly, pressing into Deaky’s cheek, his fingers tangling in his hair. He leaned forward further, until Deaky could feel Freddie’s breath tickling against his lips.

Deaky turned away, and Freddie’s hand let go of his face like it had been burned. “I’m sorry!” Freddie cried.

“No,” said Deaky softly. “Please don’t be sorry.” He looked up again, meeting Freddie’s eyes. “I’m not saying no,” he said softly. “Actually… I think I might like to say yes. But… I don’t want to kiss myself. I’d rather kiss you.”

The worry vanished from Freddie’s eyes, and his face split into a broad grin. “Yeah,” he said, nodding eagerly. “Yes, we can wait!”

Deaky smiled. Slowly, he reached out and took Freddie’s hand in his. Freddie’s hand squeezed back, and they remained like that for a little while, sitting together in the quiet and dark, just holding one another’s hands.

The sound of the door opening was enough to make Deaky jump, and he swiftly withdrew his hand as the overhead light was suddenly switched on “Bloody hell, it’s cold out there!” Brian muttered as he walked in. He stopped just inside the entrance. “Why are you two sitting in the dark?”

Deaky opened his mouth, trying to think of an excuse, but Freddie spoke first. “Darling, what on earth happened?” he explained, standing up and walking over to Brian. “Did you get in a fight?”

John turned his gaze back towards Brian, now paying closer attention. Brian looked tense, like he often did if he had a paper due, and there was an ugly mark over his left eye. Slowly, John got to his feet as well.

Brian’s eyes darted between the two of them. He looked almost skittish, like he wasn’t sure what to do. Finally, he appeared to make a decision, and his gaze turned squarely on Freddie. “You can’t guess?” he asked, his tone aggressive. 

Freddie looked bewildered, leaning back as Brian glared at him. “What?” he asked, desperation creeping into his voice. “Was it one of the neighbours?”

Brian scoffed. “You mean you don’t know?” he said, that harsh tone still creeping into his voice. 

Freddie stepped back, clearly alarmed at the hostility. “Know what?” he cried. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Brian’s eyes narrowed. He appeared to be evaluating Freddie, trying to decide whether he was telling the truth. At last, Brian’s shoulders sagged and his gaze turned to the floor, apparently deciding Freddie wasn’t the enemy. “Sorry,” he said. “I just thought you would have known…”

“Known who hit you?” Freddie questioned. “How could I possibly know that?” 

Brian bit his lip, not meeting Freddie’s eyes. Deaky stared at Brian, bewildered. It wasn’t entirely unheard of for Brian to get in a fight, but he never looked this embarrassed or uncomfortable about it. His fights, like Roger’s, were usually fuelled by a little too much alcohol and a little less care than necessary. Brian had, to the best of John’s knowledge, been at a family Christmas. It wasn’t late in the evening; how could Brian possibly have managed to get in a fight between Roger’s house and here? 

Then the penny dropped. 

John’s stomach swooped, and he felt quite sick. All of a sudden, everything seemed to come together in a sick tapestry that John wanted desperately not to be true, but it all made too much sense - Roger’s lies despite knowing the consequences of not being forthcoming; his excessive anxiety at the idea of spending time with Brian’s family; Clare arriving looking upset and acting like she knew Roger had a good reason for not wanting to see his family at Christmas; Brian arriving home with a bruise on his face, yelling at Freddie because Freddie, Roger’s best friend, should have known what had happened to him. 

John reached out and grabbed the back of the sofa. “They did this?” he asked, hoping for a denial.

Brian looked at him, almost looking like he was trying to decide whether to spare Deaky the details. Eventually though, he nodded. “His father, specifically,” he said shortly. 

“Wait, _what_?” Freddie cried, looking genuinely confused, like he hadn’t quite caught on yet. “Whose father did this?”

“I was at Roger’s parents’ all day, Freddie, whose father do you think did this?”

Freddie jerked suddenly, looking like he wanted to reach out and grab Brian but thought better of it, bringing his hands up to cover his mouth instead. “Why?” he asked, his voice muffled in his hands.

“Because I told him I switched from dentistry to biology,” Brian said coldly, his voice dripping in sarcasm. “This was after he insulted me when I said we had a record deal.”

Freddie was shaking his head, looking as though he was on autopilot. John’s mind was buzzing as he tried to recall every single time Roger had ever mentioned his childhood, trying to figure out anything Roger might have said that should have given John pause for concern. He was sure if he was feeling this way, Freddie must be feeling a thousand times worse, given that he had lived and worked with Roger for years and been his best friend even longer. Indeed, Freddie looked like he was on the verge of a panic attack.

Unfortunately, Brian either didn’t notice or didn’t particularly care. “And you live with him!” he said to Freddie. “How many Christmases and summer holidays did Roger claim his parents were out of town? Didn’t it strike you as odd that he never visited home?”

Freddie looked pale. Without moving his hands from his mouth, he suddenly began to bend forward, like his stomach muscles were contracting without his consent, and soon he was crouched on the ground, his hands going to his hair and tugging. 

John leapt forward and crouched next to Freddie, his hands going to Freddie’s shoulders as Freddie choked out a sob. “Stop it!” John said to Brian. “It’s not his fault!” 

Brian had the grace to look guilty, but John’s attention was aimed at Freddie. Freddie was now letting out a low whining noise as his hands scrunched in his hair, his breaths, when he took them, were sharp.

John was alarmed by it. He had had his own panic attacks in the past, but seeing it from the outside was something new entirely. Desperately, he rubbed Freddie’s shoulders, hoping he would calm down, because John had no idea what to do. He’d never been in this position before, and it was scary seeing Freddie suffer like that. “It’s okay!” John said. “It’ll be okay! Brian’s sorry he said that, isn’t he?” He looked sharply up at Brian, whose mouth was open in alarm at what was happening. 

Brian nodded, his blonde hair coming loose from behind his ears and falling in front of his face. “Yes, I’m sorry!” he cried. “I am - I know it’s not your fault… I’m just angry.” Brian, too, sunk to his knees next to Freddie, and when John let go of one of Freddie’s shoulders, Brian placed his own hand there, squeezing gently. “I really am sorry, Fred.”

Slowly, Freddie’s breaths began to come more evenly, and one by one, his muscles relaxed. Eventually, his hands unclenched from his hair, taking a few strands with them. “I didn’t know,” Freddie murmured as he finally sat upright, and John’s heart clenched when he saw tears on Freddie’s face. “I really didn’t know.”

“I didn’t either,” said Brian softly. “That’s why I got so mad. I’m angry at myself. I acted like his concerns were meaningless…” Brian trailed off, fingers dropping to the floor as he began to pick at the carpet. “He called me,” he said suddenly, and with a jolt, John remembered the odd phone call he had received that morning. “He begged me to leave go home.” Brian’s face scrunched up, and John thought he, too, would start crying. “I asked him what he had done to his family to make them stop speaking to him. I _blamed_ him.”

Deaky nodded, not knowing what he could say to that.

They sat together for a while on the carpet, trying to gather their composure. Eventually, Deaky got up and went into the kitchen to make the others some tea. When he returned, mugs of steaming tea in hand, the three settled in the living room to wait. 

Each and every one of them was drained and exhausted, but the difficult conversations hadn’t ended yet. They didn’t get much of a respite either. John’s tea was only halfway drunk when the door to the flat opened a final time, and Roger stepped in, his eyes casting warily over his friends as though he was assessing the danger posed by a wild animal. 

His gaze settled on Brian. He took in Brian’s posture, the concerned look on his face, and the mark around his eye, and Roger’s face fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly love your comments so much; I read them when I'm stressed at work and they make me feel so much better. I love discussing this with you guys, so please do leave a comment and let me know how you felt about this chapter <3 
> 
> I've had a couple of changes recently. I migrated to a new tumblr due to my own stupidity, so if you want to follow me there, it's @reinneme. I've been posting updates on chapter ETAs/excuses for why it's not done yet, so that's a great place to find out things. I've been trying to be more active, I swear!!
> 
> I also haven't said anything yet, but I'm also very active on Twitter. I haven't been able to say anything by now because my father has a history of cyberstalking my Twitter and I really, really don't want him to see what I've read here or on Tumblr. It sounds like he's done it again, so I'm abandoning my old account and am starting new with no name in my profile this time. Please give me a follow; I love to make new friends and chat there. My new Twitter handle is @bialakrolowa. It's on private due to obvious reasons, but I'll accept you and follow back as long as you don't look like a spam bot or my dad. 
> 
> Next chapter might not be quick, but I really hope it doesn't take this long again!!


	13. Roger's Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roger enjoys Christmas at the Mays', and discovers exactly what is so special about Brian's relationship with his parents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, once again, I am so sorry. This took way longer than expected. On the bright side, at 11,000 words, it's also the longest chapter I've ever written...
> 
> Not as many excuses this time. Just been feeling a bit stressed and sad lately and the stuff with my family has really ripped me out of my usual schedule; it's been hard to get back into it. 
> 
> Thank you so much for all your lovely support. I genuinely could not do it without you guys and I am so grateful! 
> 
> On more practical matters, I keep scheduling "Christmas dinner" in these chapters at lunchtime, and it's occurred to me that some readers may not know that "dinner" sometimes refers to lunchtime in England, particularly (in my experience) a big celebratory meal like Christmas. So "dinner" is really lunch :) 
> 
> Also Roger's not in a great headspace at the moment so heavy angst warning.

Roger spent most of the night before Christmas tossing and turning in his bed, feeling cold and miserable. 

 

He was gripped by nerves, obsessed with what the day would bring. Brian had told him time and again that he was being silly, that he would do just fine pretending to be Brian, but Roger didn’t feel even remotely confident about his capabilities as an actor.

 

Sure, he looked like Brian, but he wasn’t Brian inside. Brian somehow managed to have so much confidence in himself and his life, while Roger just felt like a mess. Brian was going to end up getting his PhD; he wrote amazing songs; he was a great cook even without using meat; and he seemed to have a great relationship with his parents. Roger couldn’t even manage to make a simple phone call without screwing up. 

 

Roger wasn’t sure whether he went to sleep or not. He supposed he must have, because one minute it seemed to be a little past one in the morning, and the next minute it was half past six o’clock. He didn’t remember sleeping, or dreaming, but he was awake now and it was late enough that he may as well get up. 

 

It was freezing cold, and Roger pulled a jacket out of his closet at random to wrap around himself as he made his way to the bathroom. His wrists stuck out the ends of the jacket comically, and it only served to heighten his bad mood, reminding him that he was trapped in his body that was not his own.

 

The water of the shower was freezing when he turned it on, and even sticking just his hand under it made his whole body shiver. He stood there in bare feet, waiting and watching the water drip from the shower head and away down the drain, awaiting the steam that would tell him it was finally time to get in.

 

Roger’s own hair, with only a slight wave, was manageable no matter what he did, but Brian’s bushy mop had been a pain right from the start of this nightmare. Roger wanted nothing more than to climb into the shower, crouch down on the floor, and just sit while the warm water ran through his hair and down his back, but as much as he didn’t have the energy to stand and hold his head out of the spray, he _really_ didn’t have the energy to deal with trying to dry Brian’s hair on top of everything else, so he took off his nightshirt, pulled as much of the hair in front of his shoulders as he could, and stepped into the shower with his head bowed, trying to avoid the water touching his hair.

 

He hadn’t showered in a couple of days. It wasn’t that he was an unhygenic person - quite the opposite, given he usually showered twice or even three times a day if life allowed it. He loved the hot water running through his hair and down his back, loved the feeling of rubbing soap into his skin, and hated feeling dirty or smelly. Showering, which had once been one of his favourite things to do, had now become something twisted and horrifying.

 

Even though his head was bowed, he kept his eyes resolutely focused upwards on the old yellow tiles on the wall. He couldn’t look down and see himself. Roger realised and accepted he could be a little vain, and he used to enjoy examining himself in the shower. Now, he turned his face away if he came by a mirror. 

 

It wasn’t that Brian was ugly - far from it; Roger thought Brian was very good looking, and he had an air of dignity about him that Roger could never hope to match. But Brian’s body wasn’t his. What Roger had liked about Brian, from the tone of his skin to the shape of his form, was now a special kind of torture. 

 

Roger stood stiffly, hands by his side and head bowed away from the water. He couldn’t bring himself to rub his body with soap. 

 

He really didn’t want to go out and face the day, but staying in the shower wasn’t really an option either with how he was currently feeling, so he dried off and pulled his pyjamas back on, rubbing the towel through his hair to try and dry off the bits that had inevitably gotten wet. 

 

As soon as he saw Brian, his stomach swooped with an unpleasant mixture of envy at Brian for stealing his body and his Christmas with Freddie, and the unpleasant anxiety of what was to come. Despite Brian’s reassurances, Roger was still worried about what could go wrong. He was sure Brian’s family were going to be nice people, but how would they react if Roger said something he shouldn’t, just because he didn’t know any better? It wasn’t like they were going to put on a friendly face for the benefit of Roger if they thought he was really their son. 

 

Roger didn't feel quite up to talking to Brian just yet, so he moved over to the kettle just so he would have something to do with his hands. 

 

“Merry Christmas, Roger,” Brian said softly, voice quiet enough not to wake Deaky. 

 

Roger mumbled a “Merry Christmas,” back at Brian, keeping his gaze on dish rack as he gathered up a pair of cups and spooned in some instant coffee.

 

Roger could feel Brian’s eyes on him as he waited for the kettle to boil. Neither of them said anything. Roger’s head felt all at once like it was pounding with a storm of thoughts, and yet he also felt completely empty. 

 

When the kettle had nearly boiled, Deaky rolled over on the sofa, looking up at them and saying something Roger didn’t quite hear. Brian told him happy Christmas in return. 

 

Deaky stood up to stumble into the bathroom, but Roger barely noticed. The thoughts swimming around in his head were quickly becoming a dull roar - his head felt almost heavy with the weight of them. He didn’t even fully know what he was going to say when he opened his mouth, but then - “Brian, I’m not comfortable going to your parents’ house.” 

 

Roger’s mouth snapped shut as soon as the words were out, so fast he nearly bit his tongue. He hadn’t fully intended on saying that, but the words had tumbled out before he could stop them, and now he just had to deal with it. 

 

“What?” Brian asked. “What do you mean?”

 

Roger bit his lip, hard enough that there was a sharp pain and he vaguely wondered if he had done actual damage to the skin. “I’m just not comfortable with it, Brian!” His voice was becoming higher in pitch, and he could feel heat rise in his neck. He was panicking - he could feel it, but he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He just hoped he would avoid crying. “I’ll call them, I’m happy to say I’m sick -“

 

Brian interrupted him before he could continue rambling. “Roger, you’re panicking,” he said, in a tone that could only be described as patronising. Roger’s eyes narrowed sharply. “You’ll be fine. I promise.”

 

Brian was giving him a sympathetic smile, like Roger was some toddler who was upset about going to daycare. It made Roger _furious_. 

 

He slammed his coffee mug down on the benchtop, ignoring the scalding liquid as it sloshed over his hands. “I _won’t_ be fine! I have to pretend to be _you_ at a family Christmas?” He blinked, his voice wavering again as the anger that had engulfed him gave way suddenly to crippling anxiety. “Jesus, Brian, do you know what happens at family Christmases?” 

 

Roger looked away from Brian. His head felt like a storm, and he really didn’t think he could continue controlling himself if he met Brian’s gaze right then. The truth was, Roger was having difficulty even keeping his eye on the old stained kitchen bench. He had very carefully avoided thinking about his family in so long, but now thanks to Brian, it was like he could hear his father yelling in his ear.

 

“What’s this really about?” Brian asked, and Roger wanted to kick himself for being so transparent. “Because you know I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think you’d do a good job. You’re great at being me.”

 

The distant sound of his father’s yelling faded from Roger’s ears, and the tense grip he still had on his mug relaxed slightly.

 

“Look,” said Brian, setting his own mug down beside Roger’s, “if you really can’t go, you don’t have to. But I just want my parents to be able to have me home for Christmas; it would break their hearts if I wasn’t there.” Roger bit his lip again, now trying very hard not to think of his sister. In his cowardice and refusal to deal with his problems, Roger had abandoned her. She had been the last person he had spoken with in his family, years ago now, and she had begged him on the phone to come home for Christmas. 

 

Roger had hung up on her. 

 

“And anyway,” Brian continued, oblivious to Roger’s thought processes, “we’re supposed to be trying to understand each other.”

 

The words cut through Roger like a knife, and suddenly the guilty feeling was magnified tenfold. Roger glared at Brian, wanting to be angry with him, but Brian’s words had held too much truth for Roger to be mad at him for when Roger was the one screwing everything up. 

 

There was nothing else for it, he supposed. He’d have to go and spend Christmas with the Mays.

 

****

 

Roger spent the rest of the morning trying to mentally prepare himself for the day to come. Brian clearly thought he was helping, but his incessant forced positivity and chirping was really starting to grate. Roger wasn’t in the mood to talk, and he certainly wasn’t in the mood for Brian’s gluggy porridge. The worst of it was that Roger could tell Brian was faking it. If there was one thing worse than a relentlessly positive person when you just wanted to wallow, it was one who wasn’t even really positive and was just making it up for no other reason than to irritate you.

 

Roger gave up in the end, retreating to his room to play with his guitar. 

 

He had indeed noticed a difference with his guitar playing since taking over Brian’s body. He wasn’t sure if it was muscle memory, or if it was just that Brian’s fingers were longer than his own and just made it easier to reach the chords, but it was coming to him with a fluidity he had not experienced before. It was almost as easy as drumming.

 

Unfortunately, when a task is easy, it’s also easy to let your mind wander. 

 

Roger had been careful. When he had finally, after many years dreaming and scheming, cut ties with his family, he had done more than change his phone number and move away. He had cut them from his mind as well. It had been hard at first, but as time wore on and he slowly replaced his family with his friends, it had gotten easier. Eventually, he had managed to get to a place he was proud of. Roger was completely self-sufficient. He paid his own rent and bills, he put himself through university, and he took care of himself. He didn’t need any family, not when he had Tim and Brian and Freddie and John. 

 

In the space of just a couple of hours, Brian had shattered the walls Roger had carefully built in his head, and now he felt overwhelmed. Memories were running through his head with no control, like sharp waves breaking on rocks. He remembered the bad times, the fights and the shouting and the pain; but those memories weren’t what made his heart feel like it was breaking. 

 

What really hurt were the good memories. Memories of playing hide and seek with Clare, memories of helping his mother make soup or hold groceries in the store; hugging his father when he had been accepted into dentistry school, and his parents giving him his first proper drum set.

 

Where would Roger be now without his drum set? He certainly wouldn’t have a record contract. He would probably still be friends with Freddie, but he doubted he even would have met Brian or John. Roger’s future was in music, and even with as twisted up as he had been feeling recently, he still knew in his heart, without even a shadow of a doubt, that if his parents hadn’t bought him his guitar and his drums, Roger would have ended up as a dentist or in some research lab, putting in seven hour days before he finally and inevitably blew his brains out. 

 

Leaving his family had seemed so necessary, but Roger had only been a teenager. What did he know? 

 

He had wondered many times over the years if his parents really loved him, but if they had really been the monsters he had so carefully constructed them to be, they wouldn’t have supported him by giving him his instruments. 

 

Roger stopped strumming the guitar. He brought his left hand up to rub his face, and it came away wet. 

 

****

 

Roger had meant it when he said he wanted Brian to be happy. He really did. It was why he was currently sitting in Brian’s car, a couple of doors down from Brian’s parents’ house, with a box sitting next to him filled with carefully wrapped presents and Christmas cheer.

 

But despite his best intentions, Roger just couldn’t bring himself to get out of the car. Instead he was sitting here, wiping every now and then at his eyes as they refused to stop leaking tears, staring up at the house like it was a dragon that needed to be defeated. 

 

Roger felt completely pathetic.

 

He couldn’t stop crying, no matter how much he tried. It was like his entire being had been swallowed up by this void, and he was powerless to stop it. He was terrified of what he would find when he entered the house, paralysed at the thought of what could happen. Roger wasn’t comfortable at all with the idea of Brian’s parents hugging him, and he was scared that if they did, he’d just burst into tears again. Worse still, he was scared of saying something wrong. Brian had claimed his family were nice, and his father had sounded nice enough on the phone, but Roger wasn’t Brian. Roger had a bad temper and a tendency to make the worst possible choices in conversations. Brian might be a mild-mannered dutiful son, but Roger was a train wreck, coming in totally unprepared, and he was certain he would manage to make Brian’s parents angry.

 

Roger couldn’t deal with that right now.

 

He choked on a sob, coughing as some spit accidentally went down the wrong pipe. What was wrong with him? Roger had never cried this much in his entire life. Angrily, he rubbed at his face, choking on an uncontrolled whine in his throat. He held his breath, trying to stop the physical act of crying even if he couldn’t do anything about the emotions behind it, and after a couple of false starts, the knot in his belly finally began to relax, and he was able to breathe without sobbing. 

 

The tension left his body with the sobs, and he leaned back in the driver’s seat, looking out at the suburban street.

 

He really did want to make Brian happy. He didn’t know where the nearest payphone would be, and anyway, Brian would be disappointed if Roger backed out now. Roger may have been a pathetic mess at the moment, but he had promised Brian, and he didn’t take that lightly.

 

Roger waited only until his eyes had cleared enough that nobody would be able to tell he was crying, and he got out of the car. 

 

Though there had been space, Roger hadn’t wanted to park right in front of the May residence. He had been crying when he arrived, and he didn’t want to risk Brian’s mother or father seeing the familiar car and coming out to wonder what was taking him so long. Because of this, there was a short walk before he arrived at their front door, just long enough that the box of presents under his arm began to grow heavy. 

 

Brian had told him to just open the door and walk in, but Roger couldn’t quite bring himself to do that, so he knocked instead, hardly able to hear his knock over the thumping of his heart. 

 

He stood there for at least two minutes, which was enough time for him to start seriously considering turning tail and running back home. His legs felt a little shaky under him, and he really was going to do some damage to his lip if he kept chewing it, but the nerves had made a reappearance and they didn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. 

 

Finally, the door was opened, putting him out of his misery somewhat. The woman who opened it had brown, curly hair flecked with grey. She was tall for a woman, standing just a few inches below Roger himself, and her face was sharp and angular, though she had wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. “Hello, Brian,” she said brightly, and there was a definite note of surprise in her voice. “Why did you knock, love? You know you can just come in!” Her accent was distinctly Scottish, which threw Roger off for a moment - he hadn’t been expecting it. 

 

Roger didn’t expect her to lean forward and pull him into a tight hug either, and he stiffened instinctively. His left hand was occupied, still supporting the box of presents at his side. He didn’t know what to do with his right hand, though, and it hung stiffly until he remembered he probably should have been returning the hug. Awkwardly, he tried to lift it at the last second to hug Ruth back, even though he didn’t really want to; but he left it too late, and soon Ruth broke the hug, stepping back and beamingas though Roger hadn’t just completely ruined the nice moment. 

 

“Who’s that, love?” called a man’s voice. Roger vaguely recognised it from the telephone. Before Ruth could answer, an older man appeared behind her. Despite his age, he still had thick hair atop his head. He was slightly overweight, and seemed to walk with an unusual gait, but his eyes were warm and friendly. “Brian!” he cried, so loudly that Roger flinched. “What on earth are you doing? It’s freezing out there - come in!”

 

Harold hobbled forward and nearly dragged Roger across the threshold. Someone - it must have been Ruth - whisked the box of presents away, while Harold pulled Roger into a hug that was so enthusiastic it bordered on being rough. Harold was exactly the same height as his wife, but he seemed strong in a way she couldn’t quite match. He also smelled completely overpowering, and Roger, who had been smoking cigarettes for longer than he cared to admit, was left struggling not to start coughing into Harold’s neck. 

 

Just like before, when he had been drawn into hugging Ruth, Roger didn’t really know what to do, so he just stood there, so tense he felt like he was about to snap, his fists clenched by his sides and his breath held behind his teeth.

 

Finally, Harold let go, though he still kept his hands on Roger’s shoulders. “Merry Christmas, Brian!” he cried, loudly again, almost shaking Roger when he said it. 

 

Roger stepped back instinctively, swallowing. This hadn’t been what he had been expecting at all, and he felt completely overwhelmed. His brain had been running on half speed for days, and the noise and smell wasn’t making things easier to process.

 

Dimly, he noticed Ruth shift, and Harold’s face fell slightly. Roger had been silent too long. “Um, Merry Christmas,” he said, speaking much more quietly than Harold had been. 

 

Roger knew he was screwing up. He would have had to have been an idiot not to see that. He clenched his jaw, waiting for the inevitable questions and potential accusations.

 

Harold and Ruth exchanged a look that Roger couldn’t quite make sense of. 

 

But then, all of a sudden, like someone had flicked a switch, the smiles suddenly returned to their faces, and they carried on as though Roger hadn’t just acted like a complete social incompetent. “Well, come on in then!” Ruth said jovially. “Oh - take off your shoes, would you, dear?”

 

Obediently, Roger crouched down and unlaced the sneakers he had worn that day. It wasn’t lost on him that he had been granted a temporary reprieve, but Harold and Ruth would surely have a limit for odd behaviour, and he had better suck it up and get it together before they grew frustrated with him. 

 

When his shoes were neatly laid against the wall (not that he saw the point in protecting the carpets, which smelled as though they had been soaked in tobacco for twenty years) he followed the Mays to the back of the house. The rear of their house featured a wide window looking out onto a frozen garden; Roger had never seen a room quite like it. There was a small wooden table by the window with a festive tablecloth draped across it, and a matching table made of iron on the other side of the window, out in the garden. There was a corner, closer to the house interior, made up to be a small living space, with a sofa and two armchairs and three bookshelves along the wall. It was to this corner that Harold and Ruth headed, and Roger followed them, perching himself on the edge of the sofa when the Mays took up an armchair each. Ruth placed the box of presents on the small coffee table next to a couple of wrapped presents that had already been there, and that was when Roger noticed that the Mays did not have a tree. 

 

“Merry Christmas, Brian,” Ruth said softly and sincerely. She leaned over and pushed one of the presents closer to Roger. 

 

Even feeling as horrendous as he did, Roger had to crack a weak smile. The Mays had wrapped Brian’s presents in dark blue paper printed with little pictures of planets. 

 

There was a blue envelope on top of the present, and Roger reached forward to take that first. His movements were slow as his mind worked, trying to balance the discomfort of reading something intended only for Brian with the idea of what might happen if he refused to read it and offended his parents. He did open the envelope eventually, figuring that Brian would have had to have been expecting him to read whatever was written in a Christmas card if he had pushed so hard to get Roger to go along. 

 

The card had a simple design, just snowflakes around a “Merry Christmas” on the front. Trying to ignore Harold and Ruth’s staring, Roger opened the card and read the message inside.

 

_Dear Brian,_

 

_We hope you have a very merry Christmas, and a wonderful year ahead._

 

_We are so proud of what you’ve accomplished. You’re a wonderful son, and we are so lucky to have you. We hope you are as proud of yourself as we are. You’re working so hard on your studies, and no matter how things turn out, we know you’ve worked your hardest._

 

_Merry Christmas._

 

_Love,_

 

_Mum and Dad_

 

Roger swallowed hard, staring at the card long after he had finished reading. 

 

“Brian?” prompted Harold softly.

 

Roger’s grip tightened, and the flimsy cardboard warped slightly in his fingers. That message had been far more personal than Brian could possibly have been anticipating - there was no way he had wanted Roger to read that. Roger had been expecting the first line only, a wish for a merry Christmas and a happy new year. He hadn’t been expecting… well, _that_.

 

Ruth shifted in her seat. Harold called his son’s name again, but Roger wasn’t really listening.

 

Right then, he missed his own parents so much that it physically hurt. He hadn’t received a Christmas card since he left home; it wasn’t something he and Freddie did together, and all his other friends had their own families and supposed he was still receiving them from his parents. The last Christmas Roger had spent with them had been alright really; there hadn’t been any fighting, but the last Christmas card he’d received had scarcely even been written in. _Dear Roger_ , it had said. Then, _From Mum, Dad and Clare_.

 

The _Merry Christmas_ had been written in printed green ink, by whatever machine had been employed to make the thing at the factory. 

 

Roger blinked, and was surprised when a drop suddenly appeared on the card in his hands, smudging the ink. He brought his hand up to his face - he was crying again. 

 

Harold got up from his seat opposite Roger and sat down next to him on the sofa. Roger sat stock still, paralysed by an unsettling combination of fear and embarrassment. Just like earlier, in the car, he couldn’t seem to stop his eyes leaking tears, so matter how hard he concentrated. 

 

Harold laid a hand on Roger’s shoulder, and another waft of stale cigarettes flowed over him. “Brian, is there something you want to talk about?” he asked. The volume and boisterousness had left his voice, and now he was soft-spoken. 

 

Roger felt utterly humiliated. He’d never cried this much in his entire life, and now he was doing it in front of complete strangers. Brian was going to be furious with him. He had trusted Roger to at least act with some semblance of normality, had believed he was capable of being Brian. One Christmas card was all it had taken to completely ruin everything, and all because after all these years, he still hadn’t managed to grow up and move on from the family he had left behind. 

 

Harold shifted, and suddenly Roger was being pulled into another hug. It was gentle this time, nothing like the harsh squeeze out in the entry way, and even though the angle was awkward with both of them sitting side by side on the sofa, Roger sunk into it. To his relief, he didn’t start sobbing uncontrollably again like he had in the car, but he did screw his traitorous eyes up in an effort to stop them from leaking tears all over Harold’s grey cardigan. He sniffed, and the pungent smell of tobacco somehow wasn’t quite so bad anymore, because Harold was rubbing his back in a way that felt almost soothing. 

 

Fortunately, Roger was able to stop crying more quickly this time, and when he felt a bit more in control of his emotions, he sat up again. Following his lead, Harold let go. Roger was too afraid to look at him directly, but his body language was relaxed, and Roger dared to hope that his embarrassing display hadn’t caused too many problems.

 

“Sorry,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “It was a lovely card; thank you.”

 

He shifted uncomfortably, rubbing at his face again. 

 

“Is there something you want to talk about?” Ruth asked gently. “Or are you just not feeling well?”

 

Roger frowned, a little confused. He could understand the first question, but Ruth asking him if he was feeling unwell was strange. He clearly wasn’t sick (well, unless you counted the fact that his body did not belong to him). 

 

Still, she had given him an out, and so he took it gratefully. “I’m not feeling well, I guess,” he said lamely. 

 

“That’s alright,” said Harold, his voice warm. “Would you like to carry on? Open some presents?” 

 

Roger nodded, and mostly for something to do with his hands, he grabbed the present closest to him. It was obvious what it was before he had even opened it, its weight and shape distinctly being that of a book, but he peeled the tape from the space-themed wrapping paper as carefully as he could (remembering that Brian was not one to rip things) and tried to school his face into one of polite interest.

 

It was, indeed, a book, a big heavy one with an exceedingly boring title: _Gravitation and cosmology: principles and applications of the general theory of relativity_ , by Steven Weinberg. Roger understood what all those words meant, but they didn’t make a whole lot of sense when strung together like that. Even so, the present wasn’t intended for him, and his lips pulled upwards in a smile. Brian would absolutely love this.

 

“Thank you,” he said, finally looking up and meeting Ruth’s eyes. She was looking at him with such love that he almost wanted to start crying again, but this time the tears didn’t come. Instead, he smiled back at her. 

 

After that, the remaining tension just seemed to melt from Roger’s shoulders, and he felt almost genuinely happy for first time in weeks. Even though he didn’t truly belong, Ruth’s kind gaze and the warm hand Harold placed on his shoulder almost made him feel like he was included. 

 

It was considerably easier to continue opening presents after that. Brian had sent Roger off with a card for each of his parents along with a few presents. Roger hadn’t read the cards, but judging from the way Ruth said, “Oh, Brian,” after she read hers, the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree in terms of writing touching, personal notes. 

 

In addition to the book, Brian’s parents had gotten him a very fancy looking dark blue fountain pen and a pot of ink. Though it had, of course, been intended for Brian, Roger rather appreciated the pen. It was weighty and well-balanced, and had a satisfying click when the lid came on or off. It gave Roger something to do with his hands, and it felt comforting to fiddle with as Ruth went over to the kitchen to continue working on Christmas dinner and Harold moved to sit back on his preferred armchair, giving Roger a kindly smile that somehow still looked vaguely threatening - he looked like he wanted to have a conversation.

 

“So Brian,” Harold said predictably. “How has life been treating you? We haven’t seen you in a while.”

 

“Hm,” said Roger vaguely, not wanting to tell Harold he still hadn’t seen his son, just a poor copy. “I’ve been busy lately.” 

 

Harold’s eyes were the same shape and colour as Brian’s, and usually Roger really rather liked looking into Brian’s eyes, but now he needed to look away. Harold’s eyes were warm, but there was a definite hardness to them, a calculating undertone that indicated Harold had not forgotten Roger’s embarrassing emotional display earlier. 

 

“What have you been up to?” Harold asked.

 

Roger snapped the lid back onto the pen, his hands tensing. Harold wasn’t going to let him off the hook. Of course, Roger knew the right answer to the question if it had’ve been his _own_ father asking. He would have said he was using the Christmas break to look for a proper job in dentistry, that he knew he loved his band and he loved drumming but it wasn’t a real job, and that he was sorry he had wasted so much time with his career by taking it so far. But Brian’s father was a complete unknown. Roger didn’t know too much about him, but he did know that Brian’s father, like his own, supported Brian’s music as a creative outlet but didn’t think it was a real job, and wanted Brian to continue studying and have a career as an astrophysicist. It was something that had caused tension between Roger and Brian, as even Brian himself had mostly agreed with his father until rather recently, thinking music wasn’t going to help him make a living and take care of his parents in their old age. It was really only after they had already gotten their record deal that Brian had begun to focus on the band as much as Roger had. 

 

Roger didn’t want to get into an argument, so he tried to play it as safe as he could. “I’ve been studying, mostly,” he lied. “The book is going to be a big help. Thank you.”

 

When he looked back up at him, Harold was smiling, and Roger relaxed slightly, thinking he had chosen the right answer. “Good,” he said. “How are you doing for money? Do you need any?”

 

Roger almost smiled there. Brian was incredibly responsible. He was always asking Roger or Freddie why they had bought that new coat when they knew they were struggling to pay off the heating bill. Brian worked as a tutor at the university during the semester, and he managed to make that money last, along with what he earned from the record company. “No, I’m okay,” he said. “I’ll be teaching again next semester.”

 

Harold beamed, and Roger supposed he had probably said the right thing. “That’s great!” Harold enthused. “Have you had any more thoughts of what you’ll do later?”

 

Roger clicked the lid off the pen, tensing. “What do you mean?” he asked. 

 

“With your career,” Harold expanded. “You could go into academia; you seem to be enjoying it. Or you could do government work… you might even end up helping us get to Mars!”

 

Harold was looking at him with such hope and excitement, but Roger just felt anxious again. Roger knew far better than Harold what Brian’s career was going to look like, and it wasn’t going to be helping humans land on Mars the way they had done with the moon a few years ago. Brian was going to end up a world famous guitarist. He was already well on the way. The local London music scene already knew Queen was a name that commanded respect. They just had to get their name out there a little more and Brian, along with Roger and the others, would not be thinking of having to get up early in the morning to work long hours for little pay. 

 

Roger didn’t want to engage in this conversation. If he answered this question, it would just lead to more, and he didn’t want to end up in the position of having to tell Harold which physicists he agreed with or what was looking promising in the field. Roger was smart, but he was a long way outside his comfort zone here. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing and risk causing an argument and ruining Christmas. 

 

“I don’t know, whatever!” he said, and then winced. The stress he was feeling had caused the words to come out with far more bite than he had intended. 

 

Roger glanced up at Harold, who was now frowning. Nervously, Roger reached up and tugged at a curl of hair. He had tried to be careful, but he had screwed up anyway, and now Harold was frowning at him. The silence was choking Roger, and he squirmed in his seat. He’d messed up. Brian had asked him to do one simple thing, and he’d totally cocked it. 

 

“Sorry,” said Harold, and Roger thought he detected a hint of hurt in his voice. “I was only asking. You told me you were excited about Mars…”

 

Roger jumped to his feet. He had to get out of there. His stomach was in knots, and his mind was stuck in a loop, replaying the way he’d snapped at Harold in a loop. “Bathroom,” he muttered, then turned and hurried out of the room and up the stairs. 

 

The landing up the stairs was dark, covered in brown carpet and with four closed doors. Roger really had been trying to find the bathroom, wanting somewhere he could calm down safely, but when he opened the first door on his right and found it was a bedroom, he didn’t want to keep looking, so he just entered and shut the door behind him with a bang.

 

It was immediately, blessedly silent, and Roger just sunk down to sit on the floor where he was, his hands coming up to rest in his hair. He was furious with himself for snapping at Harold, and scared of what would happen when he inevitably had to leave this room. He wondered if he should have just left the house entirely, and jumped back in his car to drive off. He supposed Brian’s parents might have been surprised, but it would have prevented Roger from messing up more than he already had. 

 

He wished he had paid more attention when Brian talked about his studies. He would have known what to say when the questions inevitably came. He should have prepared more; he had asked Brian for his parents’ names and interests and pet peeves but he had completely neglected to ask what he was supposed to say to those important topics parents were fond of talking about; things like his career or how his love life was going. 

 

It had been so long since Roger had been in this situation that it had simply not occurred to him. 

 

Suddenly, Roger noticed something in the corner of his eye. There, on the small table next to the bed, perched on top of a small pile of books, was a telephone. 

 

Roger brought his hands down from his bushy hair and tried to listen. He couldn’t hear anyone coming up the stairs after him. He might just have gotten away with his excuse - he might actually have time to call Brian. 

 

Trying to be as quiet as he could, just so he would be able to hear someone coming up the stairs looking for him, Roger moved over to sit with his back against the bed. He lifted the phone off the table and placed it down next to him, picking up the receiver and dialling as fast as he possibly could with the rotary mechanism. 

 

Roger brushed the bushy curls away as he brought the receiver to his ear, listening to the phone ring. He could only hope Brian and Deaky hadn’t gone out to a pub or anything. 

 

Fortunately, he was in luck. “ _Hello_?” said someone on the other end. 

 

The person sounded exactly like Freddie, and Roger had a brief moment of confusion about why Freddie was there when he had left earlier than Roger, but then he remembered what had happened. “Deaky, is that you?” he asked. 

 

“ _Yeah_ ,” said Deaky. “ _Roger_?” Deaky also sounded slightly confused, and Roger figured he had probably just had the same confusion at hearing Roger on the phone using Brian’s voice. 

 

“Yeah, it’s me,” Roger said. The arm holding the phone almost felt heavy with the relief he had that he had managed to reach them. “Brian’s dad wants to know whether I plan on working in public service or academia and I have no idea what to tell him. Can you put Brian on the phone?”

 

“ _Uh, no_ … _Brian’s gone actually. Your sister showed up and said she wanted you to come home for Christmas, so Brian went._ ”

 

Ice flooded Roger’s veins, and his heart was suddenly pounding very, very loudly in his ear. 

 

Deaky had to be wrong. There was no way Clare could possibly show up; Roger was certain she didn’t know where he lived. And besides, Clare knew better than to invite Roger over for Christmas. Roger was the one who caused most family arguments. Clare was the golden child, the one who could do no wrong - Roger was the one who played the drums too loud, studied too little, and fought too much. 

 

But why else would John have just said that?

 

“He what?” Roger asked desperately, hoping John was going to tell him it was all a misunderstanding.

 

“ _Clare took him to spend Christmas with your parents_ ,” Deaky said, and Roger could detect the note of suspicion in his voice. “ _How come you told us your parents were in Spain_?”

 

Roger’s hands were shaking, and he felt quite sick. He had gotten very good at lying about his family over the years, had carefully constructed narratives about Christmas and birthdays and talking with them on the telephone. He had gotten so good at it that he had almost started to believe himself. Talking about the family he wished he had had dulled the pain caused by the people who really were his parents. He could pretend his lies were real.

 

Now, he felt the water crashing over his head, and he suddenly found it difficult to breathe. 

 

“I have to go!” Roger cried, slamming his hand down on the phone cradle to cut the call. He immediately let go again, dialling another number, almost cursing in frustration at the time it took for the rotary mechanism to whir into place.

 

Roger had not spoken to his family in years, and though he had tried to stop thinking about them at all, he hadn’t been able to escape their psychological grasp completely. When he had learned they had moved, he’d looked them up in the phone book, and while he never intended to call, it somehow felt comforting to know that he _could_ call, if he were to so choose. He had memorised the number one night, and then cried afterwards, but he had never forgotten it. 

 

He had intended on never speaking to them again, but the desperation he felt to stop Brian from finding out _everything_ was suddenly far more important than anything else. He knew they wouldn’t know it was him, but that didn’t change the fact that he was about to speak to whoever picked up for the first time in four years had his stomach doing somersaults. In none of his imagined scenarios in which they might reunite had it looked anything like _this_.

 

Suddenly, the phone stopped ringing, and Roger heard his mother’s voice for the first time in four years. 

 

“ _Hello_?” she asked. Even in that single word, Roger could hear that she was smiling, that she was happy. For the third time that day, tears filled Roger’s eyes.

 

He hadn’t decided exactly what he did want to say to his mother at their first meeting in so long, but it definitely wasn’t: “Hi, my name’s Brian, I’m a friend of Roger’s, can you put him on please?”

 

He silently cursed himself for his poor delivery. He had sounded like an absolute idiot.

 

“ _Oh, certainly_!” said his mother, much more exuberantly than Roger’s request had warranted. Roger tried not to think too hard about the reason she was so happy. “ _I’ll just go and get him; hold on a moment, please_.”

 

There was a dull _thunk_ as the receiver was placed down on something hard, and his mum was gone. Roger rubbed his eyes. The conversation hadn’t even lasted a minute.

 

Roger didn’t have to wait too long before he heard the phone being picked up again, and the next voice he heard was his own. “ _Hello_?”

 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Brian?” Roger snapped, the pain he’d just experienced speaking to his mother causing him to address the issue rather less delicately than he would have intended. 

 

“ _Roger_?” Brian asked. “ _How did you know I was here_?” 

 

“Deaky told me you left with my sister!” Roger cried. He hoped the Mays couldn’t hear him, as he was being rather less quiet than perhaps would have been wise. “What the hell?”

 

“ _What_?” cried Brian, as though he had no idea why Roger was upset. “ _Roger, you should have seen her. She asked me to come with her to her parents, and she looked completely desperate! I couldn’t turn her away_!” 

 

Roger’s grip tightened on the receiver - how _dare_ Brian insinuate that Roger was being unreasonable. It was Roger’s family, not Brian’s. Brian had no right to insert himself into something that had absolutely nothing to do with him. 

 

“ _Look, I don’t know what’s going on here_ ,” Brian continued, “ _but I didn’t expect anything like this. You lied to me - to_ all _of us - you told me your parents were in Spain! If you had just said_ -“

 

“I don’t have to say, Brian!” Roger cried. He was hurt and upset that Brian wasn’t even trying to ask Roger why he lied, but was instead just making accusations. Roger’s family had _nothing_ to do with Brian. 

 

“ _Yes, you do. You_ do _have to say because I walk in here and your parents are crying like their son’s just come back from the dead; Clare says your parents moved here two and a half years ago and you’ve never even visited in that time; and I’m about to sit down to Christmas dinner with them. You have to give me something to go on_!”

 

The phone was pressed so hard to Roger’s ear that it physically hurt. A tiny part of him wanted to tell Brian the truth, but the bigger part of him, the part of him that had been lying about his family to teachers, to his friends, and to complete strangers, was terrified at the very thought. What was he supposed to say, anyway? _Hey, Brian, I’d rather if you just packed up and went home because my dad once dislocated my shoulder when I didn’t realise he was napping and I started practicing my drums_.

 

Roger couldn’t bear the shame. But he was also desperate to get Brian out of there. It sounded as though nothing had happened yet, but that was how it always started. Dad would make an effort, pretend to be nice, and then lose control and direct his ire at Roger. If he was in a bad mood, which he usually was at Christmas, and Brian got in the way…

 

Suddenly, Roger felt quite panicked. 

 

“You need to leave,” he said desperately. “I’m serious, Bri, walk out and go home. I didn’t ask you to do this!”

 

“ _I can’t leave_ ,” Brian said, and Roger twisted his fingers in the telephone cord. “ _For one, Clare drove me here, and for two, it would break your mother’s heart. Are you seriously telling me you care so little for your own mother_?”

 

“Fuck you, Bri!” Roger cried, not even caring any longer about how loud he was being. “You have no idea what’s going on -“

 

“ _Then tell me! What did they do that was so horrible you would refuse to speak to them for years? How many years has it been, anyway_?”  


Roger trembled. His mother’s voice echoed in his ear. In his mind’s eye, he saw Clare, tears pouring down her face as he walked out for the final time. 

 

She had been wearing her school uniform.

 

“Four,” Roger admitted in a small voice. 

 

“ _What_?” Brian asked, and Roger winced at the obvious horror in his tone.

 

“It’s been four years, Brian, is that what you were so desperate to know?”

 

Roger had been trying to avoid shame, but it twisted in his gut anyway. What would Brian, the perfect, dutiful son, think about that?”

 

“ _God, Roger_ ,” Brian said, horror clouding his voice. “ _What did they do to you_?”

 

Roger bit his lip. He almost wanted to tell Brian. He even drew in a breath, almost prepared to say the words. 

 

_They hurt me_.

 

But he couldn’t quite get it out. 

 

“ _Or_ …” Brian said slowly, “ _or what did you do to them_?”

 

Tears were pouring freely from Roger’s eyes, and his nose was now streaming too. Suddenly, the idea of telling Brian seemed impossible once again, because Roger himself was no innocent. Roger had come home drunk, had stole cigarettes, had teased his sister and refused to help around the house. 

 

Roger had been the one who had left. 

 

“I don’t have to tell you,” he said, hating how weak his voice sounded. “I want you out. Right now.”

 

“ _Roger, I can’t_!” Brian said. “ _I’m sorry, but I can’t just leave. They haven’t seen you in_ four years _. They’re heartbroken_.”

 

Roger sniffed. The hand that wasn’t holding the phone came up to press into his forehead, and he tried not to start sobbing, knowing if he did, he wouldn’t be able to stop. 

 

“ _If you tell me what happened_ …” Brian said slowly, and _fuck_ , he had clearly noticed Roger was crying, “ _I can help. I can apologise; I don’t mind taking the fall for you… I just want to help you fix this_.”

 

Roger’s chest hitched so violently that he ended up making an involuntary choking noise into the phone. It was a genuinely nice offer, and if Roger thought apologies would work, he might even have taken Brian up on it. Realistically, though, he knew apologising for walking out would only make his mother cry and his father get angry, and then Brian would be left in a very precarious position. 

 

The best that could be hoped for, if Brian refused to leave, was just to ignore it and hoped his family played along. The Taylors were wonderful at pretending nothing was wrong. If they just did that, and they usually did, Roger would just make something up later and then tell Brian he had reconciled with his family, thank you very much for the assistance there.

 

Roger was good at lying. 

 

“There’s no fixing this, Brian,” Roger said honestly. “Do whatever you want; stay, leave, I don’t care.”

 

“ _No, Roger, you do care_ \- _they’re your_ family _for crying out loud_ -“

 

Roger had no interest in hearing anything further Brian had to say. He had clearly made up his mind, and Roger just wanted to stop thinking about the fights, the pain, the confusion and the isolation. “I have to go,” he said roughly, and then slammed the receiver back down on the phone without waiting for a response. 

 

As soon as the phone was down, Roger gasped, and then he was sobbing again, his hands pressed hard into his face almost as though he was trying to push the tears back in. He couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear the painful memories that were now washing over him like an inescapable tsunami. He had avoided thinking about his family as anything other than the fictitious construct he had created to support his lies for so long, and he had not been ready to remember again; certainly not in the bedroom of his friend’s parents. 

 

So caught up was he in his grief that he barely noticed the door open quietly, and someone else walk in. Harold didn’t shout at Roger for being somewhere he shouldn’t; didn’t tell him to suck it up and stop whining like a girl. Harold instead carefully got down to the ground next to Roger (which looked like it caused him a bit of pain to do so) and then drew him in for a hug.

 

Roger was starting to cross the line into being hysterical, and he couldn’t have explained himself if he tried. Harold didn’t even ask. He just held Roger to his chest, not minding that his head was buried in thick curls, gently rocking as Roger cried. 

 

Roger clung right back to him, too upset to worry about the fact that he had just offended this man, or the fact that he had never met him before. Harold’s hugs were warm and soothing, and were something Roger desperately needed right then. 

 

When Roger finally felt more in control of himself, he sat up and broke off the hug. Harold left one hand on his shoulder, and when Roger looked up at him, he didn’t look angry or upset. He looked concerned. “Are you alright now?” he asked gently. 

 

Roger blinked at him. He honestly couldn’t imagine anyone responding to the complete mess Roger had presented himself as today with a question like _are you alright now_. No, Roger had expected, at best, questions on what was wrong. It wasn’t lost on him that Ruth had asked earlier if there was something he wanted to talk about, and when he had said he was just not feeling well, the issue had not been pressed. It still was not being pressed now. 

 

“I’m alright now,” Roger said, and he really meant it. This final flood of tears had felt cathartic, the hug from Harold only emphasising that. 

 

The hand on Roger’s shoulder squeezed slightly. “I love you, son,” Harold said softly, then he withdrew his hand. “Dinner is ready, but you can come down later if you’d like more time…”

 

“No, I’m alright,” insisted Roger, and he felt it even if he was sure his face was pale and blotchy. “Dinner sounds nice.”

 

Harold’s smile broadened, even if his eyes still looked a little sad. 

 

They headed downstairs together. Ruth had laid out the food while Roger was upstairs, and it smelled divine. Roger hadn’t been particularly hungry recently, but his mouth watered when he saw the ham. Roger’s own mother tried, but she had never been a particularly good cook, so Christmas dinner had always been more of an exercise in trying not to hurt her feelings than it was about enjoying a meal, so Roger was excited for this. 

 

Ruth didn't ask any probing questions either, so as Roger sat down, he finally started to feel okay about spending Christmas with Brian’s family. Roger had done everything he could possibly have done to embarrass himself or make them angry, and they had treated him with love and respect in return. Finally, what Brian had been trying to drill into him for days began to truly sink in: Brian’s parents didn’t treat Brian with love because Brian was perfect and knew all the right things to say in any given situation; they treated Brian with love because they truly loved him, and they were good people. 

 

And if Roger got to pretend for just one day that he truly belonged in this family, that he was the one who deserved love and respect and support, well then, who would ever know? 

 

From that moment, Roger had a truly wonderful Christmas. Ruth’s food was just as delicious as it had looked, and Roger had three helpings. Harold was a talented storyteller, and Roger laughed loudly at the tales he told from work. Roger even participated, telling a story about an encounter he had had with an odd customer at the markets a while ago, although he qualified it by saying he had been helping out Freddie and himself that day, rather than it being his regular job. 

 

After dinner, the three of them washed the dishes together, and with the extra help the big job didn’t take too long at all. Harold and Ruth continued to talk while they worked, and Roger listened and laughed when they said something amusing. At one point, Harold began singing _Jingle Bells_ rather more loudly than necessary, given that Roger and Ruth were standing right next to him, and soon Ruth joined in. Roger didn’t feel much like singing, but he smiled while listening to them, and by the time the dishes were all dried and put away, he felt warm inside, like he’d sunk into a hot bath on a freezing cold day.   
  
After washing the dishes, Ruth got out a jigsaw puzzle, and Roger supposed this was probably a May Christmas tradition, because there wasn’t any discussion before Ruth set it on the coffee table and settled down on the floor. Harold, who seemed to have a bad knee, pulled his armchair closer, taking a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lighting one; and Roger followed Ruth’s lead and sat down on the floor. 

 

The puzzle was an intricate picture of the Seine River at dawn, with boats dotted along the water and the Parisian architecture lit beautifully by the sun. Putting it together was peaceful, and Roger was able to enjoy sinking deeper into his fantasy that he really belonged here, and he wasn’t just an imposter intruding onto a sacred family holiday. The small family talked as they worked, and though Roger did speak when he felt he had something to say, neither Ruth nor Harold pressured him with questions. 

 

That morning, Roger had been intending on staying for the shortest possible time while still appearing polite. By the time he actually left, it was much later than he had originally intended. Ruth offered to let him stay the night, and Roger was genuinely tempted to take her up on it. 

 

But as fun as his fantasy was, there was the gnawing fear in the back of his mind about Brian. Roger wasn’t part of Brian’s family, but while he had been enjoying his fantasy, Brian had with the Taylors. Roger didn’t know what he was more afraid of: his father doing what he always did and lashing out at Brian, or coming home to find that Brian had had a happy Christmas. If that had happened, it would mean it really and truly was just a problem with Roger that caused his father to become upset with him. 

 

Harold and Ruth said goodbye to Roger at the door, each giving him a long hug that he returned enthusiastically. Harold made him promise to call, and Ruth made him promise to look after himself and get out of the house each day. Roger headed back to Brian’s car with a heavy feeling in his gut as his fantasy shattered and he was left with nothing but the pit of anxiety at the idea of what had happened to Brian that day. 

 

The best case scenario was that Brian had indeed listened to Roger, and had left shortly after hanging up the phone, but somehow Roger thought that was unlikely. That left him with two possibilities: Christmas had gone by without incident, in which case Roger would have to come up with some excuse as to why he had been lying about his family for four years; or Christmas had ended in a fight, in which case… well, Roger didn’t really know what he was going to do if that had been the case. 

 

Driving through London, Roger suddenly began to feel worried about a third possibility: that Brian may even have been seriously hurt. Roger was lucky; the times his father did lose his temper and become violent, he usually was too angry to concentrate properly, which resulted in poorly aimed punches with not a whole lot of technique. He wasn’t a particularly strong man, so with any luck Brian would be able to defend himself. Roger, too messed up in the head to think straight, didn’t even try to fight back. The few times he had tried that, it hadn’t ended well for him. 

 

But what if Brian _did_ try and fight back, and, thinking it was his son who was acting this way, Michael was now angrier at him than ever?

 

Roger shuddered. No, the only acceptable solution was that Christmas had gone by without incident, and Brian was now back home laughing with Freddie and John about what a drama queen Roger was. Roger would just have to come up with an excuse as to why he had avoided his parents for so long. Roger had been making excuses all his life. What was one more?

 

By the time he pulled up outside his flat, Roger had a scenario ready to go in his mind. His family _had_ had a fight. Roger wanted to be a musician, but his parents didn’t approve. Roger refused to compromise, and simply grew tired of listening to them try to convince him to become a dentist, and so said he would stop talking to the until they supported his dream. Roger hadn’t told the others because he knew how important Brian’s family was to him, and he knew Freddie had had it worse with his own parents. He was trying to hide it because the others would find him silly. 

 

It was petty, really, but Roger had stopped speaking to people for pettier reasons before. He was sure the others would believe him. 

 

When he opened the door to his flat, though, his plans went out the window. Deaky was staring at him with what could only be described as pity in his eyes. Freddie was looking at him with abject horror. And Brian…

 

There was a bruise just beginning to form around Brian’s eye. 

 

Roger felt his face fall. 

 

Brian was the first to move, setting the mug of tea he was holding down on the ground and standing up from where he had been sitting on the sofa. He opened his mouth to say something, but the words apparently got stuck in his throat, and he ended up looking away, to a point over Roger’s shoulder, like he was embarrassed. 

 

Roger felt his cheeks heating up, and even though he was the tallest person in the room, he couldn’t help but feel as though he was tiny and helpless. 

 

To Roger’s surprise, it ended up being Deaky who spoke first. “Brian says your father hit him,” he said bluntly. “Has he always done that?”

 

Roger almost stepped backwards, so shocked was he by the bluntness of the question. His lips parted, but then he shut his mouth and swallowed hard. 

 

All Roger’s carefully constructed narratives were crashing around him. He hadn’t been at all prepared for this.

 

Slowly, not knowing what else he could do, he nodded. 

 

“Oh, darling,” said Freddie, shaking his head. His hands were pressed much more tightly than necessary against the mug he was holding. “Why didn’t you ever say?”

 

Roger’s throat finally came unstuck. “Because I knew you’d look at me like that!” he cried, gesturing towards his friends. Each of them was looking at him like he was about to break, to shatter apart, and the worst part was that Roger himself felt like they were right. The warmth and acceptance from Harold and Ruth seemed so long ago, and Roger felt like a small scared kid again, trying to explain how he had ended up breaking a window playing in the garden. “You’re looking at me like I’m completely pathetic!”

 

“Roger, no one thinks that!” Brian cried, finally finding his voice again.

 

“Oh yeah?” Roger snapped. “Then why are you pitying me? So my dad hit me - big deal; lots of people’s dads have hit them! Freddie’s dad sent him off to live in India and you don’t look at him like he’s incapable of looking after himself!”

 

Freddie stepped backwards, clearly taken aback at the reference.

 

“I don’t think you’re incapable of looking after yourself,” Brian said, clearly trying to keep his voice as measured as possible. The obvious caution only made Roger madder. “But you clearly are not okay about this. You didn’t see them for four years, and you were so upset on the phone -“

 

“And why didn’t you just leave?!” Roger was shouting now, hand flying up to point at Brian. “You don’t care about me; you don’t respect me! I told you to leave and you should have just went, and _now_ look at you!”

 

For just a brief second, Brian looked genuinely ashamed. But then the wall went straight back up, and Brian, the most stubborn among them, folded his hands over his chest. “You didn’t tell me anything!” he cried. “Think of the position you put me in! I had you telling me I had to leave for _no reason_ , and then I had your sister and your mother… Roger, they were _desperate_ to see you!” Brian shook his head, looking at the ground. “I get not wanting to speak to your father,” he said slowly, “but why did you abandon your mother? She didn’t do anything.”

 

Roger scoffed. “Oh, didn’t she?” he snapped. He threw his hands out wide. “Well, go on then, tell me what happened!”

 

Brian blinked, a hint of fear in his eyes. “What?” he asked.

 

“Tell me how you ended up with that bruise on your face. Go on!”

 

Brian shook his head, visibly confused, but he answered anyway. “I told your parents that you had switched from dentistry to biology,” he explained. “Your father got angry at that, and he punched me.”

 

“And?!” Roger pressed.

 

“And?” Brian repeated. “And nothing; that’s what happened. I left afterwards.”

 

Roger shook his head. “No, and what did my mother do after he hit you?”  


“Well… she didn’t do anything!” Brian exclaimed. “Roger, she seems like a sweet woman who didn’t do anything wrong -“

 

“ _Didn’t do anything wrong_?” Roger repeated, incredulity colouring his tone. “Brian, you just said it. She did _nothing_. It’s par for the course for her… she acts all sad, but at the end of the day she doesn’t give a shit about her husband hurting me.” 

 

Roger deflated, the anger suddenly dissipating, and he was just left feeling sad once more. There was a lump in his throat again. “But it’s great to hear how much you trust my judgment on my own family matters when you forced your way in there without asking - _really_ , Brian, thank you.”

 

Brian didn’t respond, and Roger couldn’t stand to look at him any longer. The lump in his throat was growing rapidly, and he had to get out of there before the dam burst and he humiliated himself even further in front of his friends. 

 

“I’ll see you around,” he muttered, and without giving them another glance, he turned and left the flat, slamming the door behind him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading all that, and for sticking with this fic so long!! Please do leave a comment and let me know what you thought! I'm so sorry I've been so slow lately; I'll really try and pick it up!!
> 
> Please come be my friend on Tumblr!! @reinneme I'm beginning to learn how to use this site so come be my friend and chat and share good thoughts.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After learning John returns Freddie's feelings, Freddie and John go out on a first date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cripes. I'm so, so sorry. I never ever intended this to take so long. There are a lot of reasons this took so long but honestly the main one is that I was just feeling embarrassed. I've been so slow on everything; not just writing but replying to people and reading and just dealing with things. I got completely out of control. I have a folder just for AO3 emails in my email account and it's over 130 :( I have unread messages on Tumblr and everywhere and honestly the content in this chapter is really not my forte (I don't feel I can write dates well) so it was just easier to hide and pretend nothing was happening.

Roger didn’t return that night, and Brian, looking pale and wan, retreated back into Roger’s bedroom, closing the door without another word to John and Freddie. Freddie sat up with John for a while, his legs crossed so tightly that his muscles started to ache, and they said nothing as they stared at the door, hoping it would open and Roger would come back. When he didn’t, Freddie retreated into his bedroom, closing the door behind him. His almost-kiss with John seemed like a lifetime ago. 

Freddie lay awake for a long time, wondering how he had missed something so huge. He had been friends with Roger for years, had lived and worked and played with him and he had never questioned why Roger’s family were always conveniently absent or unavailable during traditional family holidays. Skipping Christmas wasn’t odd for Freddie, whose parents were Zoroastrian, but it should have raised Freddie’s suspicions that Roger, who was from a rather average background, spent every Christmas drinking with Freddie. 

Freddie felt rather ashamed. A good friend would have noticed, would have at least asked. 

By the time Freddie drifted off to sleep, his pillow was damp from the tears. 

The next morning, he woke late, feeling surprisingly well-rested considering the emotional turmoil of the previous night. As often happens, the long sleep helped him remember the events of the night before in a calmer manner, and thinking about Roger no longer sent him off into a spiral of guilt about what he hadn’t seen or worry about where Roger was now. Realistically, Freddie had had no reason to suspect Roger wasn’t being entirely honest; he respected his friend too much not to take him at his word. Roger had been upset last night, but he was a grown man and he was capable of sleeping elsewhere if that was what he chose. 

Roger would come back when he had calmed down, just as Brian would leave Roger’s bedroom once he had had time to come to terms with his role in the events of the night before. Freddie didn’t need to force it. 

When Freddie emerged from his bedroom, John was already buttering toast on the kitchen bench. He looked up when the door opened, his knife stilling in his hand. Freddie stopped, suddenly nervous. He had been bold last night, as he usually was, and John had said he might be interested, but what if he was just saying that to be polite, to avoid an awkward moment? What if he only needed Freddie to get his body back, and as soon as that happened he’d leave like he had been planning?

Freddie swallowed, trying to banish the anxious thought from his mind. John wasn’t the type to lie about something like that, and he certainly wouldn’t be so horrible as to assume Freddie would only help him get his body back if John agreed to pursue a romantic relationship. No, John had been telling the truth when he had said he was interested. 

That didn’t stop Freddie feeling quite awkward, standing there in his pyjamas while the boy he liked rather a lot stared at him. 

“Hi,” said John, his voice louder than usual. 

“Hi,” responded Freddie, feeling stupid. Why was it so hard suddenly to talk to Deaky? 

John’s eyes darted downwards at his toast. “Uh, would you like some toast?” he asked, pushing the plate in Freddie’s direction.

“No!” said Freddie hastily. “I mean, I can make my own. That’s yours.”

“Please take it!” John implored. “I can make more!” As though to prove the point, he quickly turned to the still uncovered bread to his right, sticking it in the toaster and then staring at it as though the toaster was the most interesting thing in the room. 

It occurred to Freddie suddenly that John must be feeling just as awkward and uncomfortable as Freddie himself, perhaps even more so. John had been single as long as Freddie had known him, and Freddie wasn’t entirely certain whether he had ever had a serious relationship or not. 

Freddie smiled then, walking forward and taking the toast. John had been half way through buttering it when Freddie had walked in and distracted him, and he had evidently forgotten to finish, so half of the first slice was dry, but Freddie choked it down without comment, not wanting to make things more uncomfortable between them. 

“I was thinking,” said Deaky suddenly, still staring intently at the toaster, “do you want to go do something today?”

Freddie paused in his chewing, looking up at John, whose face was pale and whose fists were clenched by his side. Those cues, more than anything, tipped Freddie off to John’s intentions. It wasn’t simply an invitation to while away the hours as friends; no, John was asking him out. 

Suddenly, Freddie felt a grin come unbidden to his face, and he couldn’t have stopped it if he tried. “I would love to do something today,” he said honestly. 

****

John didn’t know where he wanted to go, so Freddie took the initiative and brought him to the Tate Gallery. Despite living in London for a few years now, John had never been before. It was free to enter, which was good because Freddie had precious little money to his name, and it would give them something to look at in case staring at each other grew too awkward.

In short, it was the perfect spot for a first date. 

They spent a while walking around, looking at the artworks. John didn’t know anything about art, so Freddie did most of the talking, telling him about the paintings, the brush technique, and little facts about the artists. John let him speak, listening with that patient, quiet understanding he was so known for. 

Freddie stopped speaking when they arrived at a dark painting. It was dominated by lines in the foreground, which gave John the impression that he was viewing the scene through reeds on a river bank, and behind them were depictions of women in dresses and men in coats. There were strangely oversized daisies in amongst the figures; John was not sure whether the flowers were supposed to be large or whether it was the people who were intended to be small. 

“What’s this one?” John asked, after Freddie had been quiet longer than would have been expected.

“ _The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke_ ,” Freddie said softly, his eyes remaining fixed on the painting and not darting down to the little card with the information printed on it. “It was painted by a man named Richard Dadd while he was in an insane asylum after murdering his father.” 

John’s gaze drifted from Freddie’s face back to the painting on the wall. “This was what you named your song after,” he said slowly. 

In the corner of his eye, he saw Freddie nod. “Dadd was thought to be a lunatic,” he said softly. “But his inner world was so rich and vibrant. Life can fall down around you, but if you build your own kingdom in your mind… No one can ever take that freedom from you.” 

Freddie’s hand came up briefly before returning to his side, as though he wanted to touch the painting but thought better of it. 

“Is that how you do it?” John asked quietly.

Freddie shot him a quizzical look.

“The things you told me…” John continued gently. “You lived in a warzone, Freddie. Your parents sent you away from home, and you were just a child. How did you cope with that kind of rejection?”

Freddie blinked, shrugging his shoulders. It looked like he was trying to appear casual, but the tightness in his jaw gave him away. “I’ve always been the odd one out,” he said. “I was the Indian child in British Zanzibar, then the Parsi boy from Zanzibar in India, then finally the flamboyant Indian singer in London. What options do I have but to hold my head high?”

“You didn’t answer me,” John prompted. 

Freddie looked back at the painting, staring at it with such intensity that John was suddenly concerned his eyes would dry out. “I did, in a way,” Freddie hedged. “Perhaps if I had grown up in your house with your family, I might not have coped quite so well with going to live in another country. I never grew up thinking I should stay with my parents in Zanzibar forever; lots of children there went overseas for school. My extended family were close and it wasn’t odd for me to be living with them instead of with my parents. I think English families are quite different, in some ways. It’s smaller. You have your parents, and who else do you go to? I’ve never heard any of my English friends mention aunts or uncles or cousins who live down the road and come for dinner often. If they are there, you barely speak to them.” Freddie paused, his eyes finally dropping from the painting to focus on the floor below. “I missed my parents terribly when I was away from home, but I never thought they abandoned me. I thought they were doing what they could to give me an education. And when things get tough… when I was unable to sleep from homesickness or when I was afraid the fighting would reach us and my family would be killed, I make everything disappear and go to Rhye.”

They were quiet for a few moments, Freddie still staring unseeingly at the wall below the painting and John staring at Freddie, pondering his words. 

“Anyway,” Freddie said softly, blinking and seeming to shake himself out of his reverie, “enough from me. Let’s see if we can find some lunch, shall we?”

Freddie smiled and turned on his heel. John waited a moment longer, taking a last look at the painting before following his friend. Despite the dark colours and sombre expressions on the characters within the painting, he could feel an odd thrill in his core at the thought of the imagined society captured in oil and canvas. John had always heard that fantasy was a child’s endeavour, but Freddie had a rich inner life that John envied. Perhaps it was everyone else who had it backwards, and Freddie, with his kingdom of Rhye, was really the one who had it all figured out. 

****

Freddie and John bought sandwiches from a stall near the gallery and sat on a bench overlooking the Thames. Freddie had intended it to be a romantic spot, but he hadn’t quite anticipated the level of traffic noise or the less than pleasant smell of the river. Still, John didn’t seem to mind; he looked quite relaxed as he ate his sandwich, his eyes following one of the boats on the water.

Freddie’s stomach fluttered. He still wasn’t quite used to this new way he saw John, and even though Freddie thought he might be having an easier time than the younger man at looking past seeing himself when he looked at John, it still wasn’t exactly preferable. Even so, he really was beginning to fall for John, and the jitters in his stomach and the heat in his face was enough to make him forget the less than ideal scenario.

He wanted to lean over and kiss John, even if it would be his own lips he was kissing. To Freddie, that was worth it. He didn’t try, though. He respected John’s desire to wait. 

When they finished their sandwiches, John took the paper wrappings from Freddie’s hand and scrunched them up along with his own into a tiny ball. Freddie smiled at the sight. Roger might have thrown the paper ball into the river, but John held it carefully, already looking around their vicinity for a rubbish tin. When he didn’t find one immediately, he still held the paper in his hand, unwilling to litter their surroundings further even though the pavement around them wasn’t exactly pristine. 

John always managed to hold to his own moral code, no matter what was happening around him. 

“Do you mind if I ask you something?” Freddie said suddenly, surprising even himself.

John looked back at him, nodding for him to continue.

Freddie swallowed. His mouth suddenly felt dry, and his heart was beating more rapidly in a way that wasn’t quite related to his new feelings for the young man sitting next to him. “I’ve been feeling nervous…” Freddie began. Admitting it was harder than he would have thought, especially when he saw John’s eyes harden slightly at his words. “Ever since this happened, I’ve been feeling sick at things that used to not scare me. I try to do what I did before… I try to disappear into the worlds I create in my mind, or I try to focus on songs I’m writing, but it doesn’t work like it used to. It all started from this… this curse…” Freddie clenched his jaw. Next to him, John had become unnaturally still. “I just wanted to know if you feel the same? I feel like I’m going mad sometimes; I don’t know what to do!”

John was frozen next to him, staring at Freddie almost like he had said something incredibly offensive. Freddie suddenly felt incredibly unsure of himself. Not knowing what else to do, he began fiddling with the fabric on his trousers, but even that motion probably made him look like a lunatic.

Just as he was about to apologise, John spoke. “No,” he said softly, and Freddie’s heart dropped. “I’ve felt just the opposite.”

Freddie’s hand came up to twist in his hair. He had found the slight pain from tugging it helped sometimes when he was feeling especially overwhelmed. Now, though, he did not get to pull it - John’s hand encircled his own, and brought it back down to rest between them, still clasped in John’s.

“I’ve been feeling good,” John said. Despite the words, pain clouded his tone. “Ever since this thing with Mrs Finch. I used to break out into a sweat at the thought of going to the store or making a phone call. I was terrified of making a mistake, any mistake, because the mistake would haunt me and keep me awake for weeks afterwards! God, Freddie”- and John shook his head roughly -“when I was eight I told my class at school my birthday was going to be on the Friday. My teacher had to correct me and tell me my birthday was on a Saturday.” He shook his head again. “It was such a tiny thing and it was so long ago, but I still think about that sometimes, about how stupid I must have seemed and how badly I wished I hadn’t made that mistake…” He squeezed Freddie’s hand.

“But when I’m you,” John continued, looking back into Freddie’s eyes, “none of that haunts me any longer. I feel free. I mean I managed to sing a song in front of all those people! I danced in public… I’ve lived more in these past few weeks than I have in the rest of my entire life. But I think all my silly hangups have somehow been transferred to you… and while I’ve been enjoying the rare opportunity to relax, you’ve been trapped. I’m so sorry, Freddie.”

“No!” Freddie cried, his other hand coming up to wrap around John’s. “You shouldn’t be sorry! It’s not your fault…” Freddie trailed off, thinking for a minute. “John, I think you’re incredible,” he said. “I’ve been feeling so rotten lately. I can barely cope for just a few weeks, and now you tell me you’ve been dealing with this for your entire life. I don’t know how you’ve managed.”

The corner of John’s mouth twitched. “You get used to it,” he said softly. “I know not to let it get the best of me… if I did I would never have gone to university or joined a band, and I certainly wouldn’t have any friends.”

“But you made that choice,” Freddie said sincerely. “You worked on it. You’re incredible, you really are.”

John opened his mouth as though he was going to protest, but then thought better of it and remained silent, giving Freddie a gentle smile. “I had no idea this was going to affect you,” he said eventually. “I am sorry for that, even if it’s not my fault. If you’d like I can teach you what I’ve learned, show you how to deal with it better?”

Freddie nodded. In talking to John and learning that even if Deaky wasn’t experiencing the problems with nerves now, he did understand, Freddie felt less alone. That was enough to help the knot in his stomach loosen, and from there all his tense muscles across his entire body gently relaxed. 

With John by his side, Freddie felt he was going to be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again I'm so so sorry this took so long. Please leave me a comment if you're still reading (and bless you if you still are <3 ). I'll really really try not to take this long again even if I am embarrassed about how utterly out of control I am.


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